


Obsidaticum

by SJN



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Game of Thrones RPF
Genre: Abusive Relationships, F/M, Not Canon Compliant, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-13 07:03:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 38,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21490306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SJN/pseuds/SJN
Summary: Robb Stark captures two Lannister's instead of just one... Will she be the key to getting his sisters back or will she destroy everything that he cares about? - This is AU featuring Robb/OC
Relationships: Jon Snow / Original Female Character (Later in story), Robb Stark/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 69
Kudos: 194





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: This story used to be on Fanfiction but they removed it for the graphic content so I'm now re-editing it and posting it here. 
> 
> Just a little bit of back story.. this is AU but I also tend to make my characters even more flawed and  
OOC (out of character) than you're probably used to.
> 
> In this story there will be no Talisa or Jeyne or whatever you want to call the boring girl that Robb ends up  
marrying. 
> 
> Back story on Ella: She's just turned 16 and is the youngest daughter of Tywin Lannister and a noble woman he married who dies before this story begins. She's beautiful, bubbly and kind but has her own rebellious streak. I've created her based on Caroline Forbes from the Vampire Diaries. I have created video trailers for this story which you can find the link on my profile. 
> 
> Obsidaticum; Medieval Latin term for hostage.

**Chapter 1**

If you asked her today how she took waking up that fateful morning that changed her entire life she’d tell you she took it with a disturbing ease. 

In that moment though she felt anything but. Her head felt far too heavy for her own neck to hold up and she could barely move her limbs. She felt like the morning after her last name day when she snuck into Tyrion’s chambers and ransacked his wine. She groaned thinking of how sick she had been that next morning, and cursed her brother for always making drinking wine seem so easy and fun. 

The light from the sun burned orange on the other side of her eyelids as she blindly searched for a pillow to cover her face with. Feeling around she realized why she felt so uncomfortable.  Instead of being in a warm, cozy bed she was laying in what felt like dirt; her entire body stiff and aching all over. 

_ What in the seven hells- _

Her eyes snapped open in shock and a bit of fear as she looked around her.

Yes, she was indeed in  _ dirt  _ and  _ no _ , that wasn't the worst of it.

It was the  ** _cage_ ** that sent her into an instant panic. 

What had  _ happened _ last night? The last thing she remembered was arguing with Jaime about her upcoming wedding to Willas Tyrell and his refusal to take her to the Reach like he had promised their father he would do. He’d even threatened to tie her to her horse and take her straight to Kingslanding. 

She had just turned away from her brother, intending to make a swift and over dramatic exit from his tent when what she assumed could only be soldiers charged in from every direction. She remembered spinning back around to see Jaime with his sword, shouting something she couldn’t hear. She barely had time to scream his name before everything went dark.

_ What happened to Jaime? Was he alive? Why wasn’t he with her? Where would they have taken hi- _

A low growl from behind her had her scrambling back...

Gods, if she wasn't already in a panic, she was  _ now _ .

Seated right outside of her cage was the largest, scariest beast she had ever seen. Calling it a wolf wouldn’t even be accurate. Does a wolf even get that big? 

“Don’t scream, don’t scream, don’t scream, be like father says, be brave like a lion… lions don’t scream.” 

When the beast stood to his full height, she decided screaming was exactly what she would do.

So she screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

Xxx

Okay, so the beast who she now realized was a direwolf wasn't the worst thing she would face that morning.

A sleazy, arrogant turd decided to check out the screams. Nevermind the numerous guards she could see outside the cage she was being kept in, gawking at her with their too stern, too ugly northern faces. 

Just why she, Ella Lannister was in a cage while a giant wolf roamed about freely was unclear to her, but this arrogant ass was just there to make her morning even more special.

"Good morning beautiful. You just missed the most gorgeous sunrise," he said while leering at her. She glared at him with as much hatred as she could and pushed herself as far back as the bars would allow.

"You know," arrogant ass continued, "Watching a breathtaking sunrise is so much better with a beautiful woman in your lap… or on her knees."

"Why am I here?" she demanded, trying her best to sound brave rather than afraid.

"Ella isn't it? Rude of me not to introduce myself. Theon Greyjoy at your service..." he mockingly bowed with a smirk, turning to glance at something behind him before turning back to continue. 

"Do you not remember? We took your camp. Killed your men. Dragged the Kingslayer out in chains.” He grinned, “Like a dog. I had the pleasure of capturing you. Sorry for the head, I normally have a different way to render a lady unconscious.” 

She wanted to roll her eyes but decided against it for now. She needed a moment to consider the information she’d just been given. Jaime was in chains and possibly hurt. This turd was Theon Greyjoy which meant she had been taken by the Iron born… but if that were the case she’d likely already have been raped and they were on land, not a ship. 

Her head hurt so very badly, and she could hardly think of anything else besides the pain and her brother. Finally she decided to ask what she wanted, rather than what she probably should. 

"Where is Jaime? Is he okay?" 

Theon took a moment to study her hopeful expression before replying. “The Kingslayer is in another part of the camp in a cage far worse than yours. He's alive…  _ Barely _ ." 

Ella bit her lip as she glanced around the camp. She could only see endless tents and a few men standing around watching her with interest. It was likely still early in the morning and the sun had probably only been up for a couple of hours.

A direwolf sigil  _ (or several) _ caught her attention and she nearly cursed her own stupidity. 

"May I please speak to Robb Stark?" she asked in the smallest voice possible, hoping against hope that he didn't see her as a threat.

The arrogant smirk on his face grew even worse.

"Hmm. Let me go and see if he is available to spare you a moment." Theon turned to leave, but still managed to look back over his shoulders to leer at her more before disappearing. 

_ So. Gross. _

Ella wasn't sure how long it took before she heard footsteps approaching, but after having some time to think, she felt as if this nightmare was only going to get worse before getting better. If better was even a  _ possibility. _

_   
_ She didn’t have to wait very long. 

The man who she knew was her enemy didn't look anything like she thought he would.

He looked average height, maybe a tad shorter than Jaime but with a slighter build. He looked strong and he clearly favored his mother's side with his dark auburn curls and piercing blue eyes. He appeared to be young, maybe a little older than her, but the tiredness around his eyes and stubble seemed to make him appear much older than she knew him to be.

The only thing that really showed him as Stark was the frown and humorless expression on his very stern looking face. Whatever she prepared to say to him was long gone after his cold gaze focused directly on her. 

He looked into her now watery eyes for what seemed like eternity... She could hardly breathe and while it seemed he could stare straight into her very soul, she couldn't read anything in his. 

Well.. that isn’t true. She could see a small amount of pity, and a whole lot of hate.

Swallowing, she felt even smaller and helpless than she did before meeting him.

Without thinking, six words she never would have expected a Lannister to say slipped out.

"Are you going to kill me?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**“I am a woman who makes things happen, and I am not defeated yet. I am not defeated by a boy with a newly won crown, and no man will ever walk away from me certain that he won't walk back.” ― ** **Philippa Gregory, ** [ **The White Queen** ](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/13560666)

"Are you going to kill me?" Ella cringes at how pathetic she sounds, and for a split second she thinks she sees a flash of guilt cross his features before the cold mask is put back in place. 

They spend several moments observing each other before he finally clears his throat.

"As long as you behave and my father and sisters are returned no harm will come to you."

"Holding me hostage will not get your father released, nor your sisters. Joffrey doesn't care what happens to Jaime or I. If you’d ever met him you’d know this already.”

Robb's blue eyes grow even more cold. “I have met him, when he came to Winterfell, and it’s not him who will decide the release.” 

“My father-” 

“Your father isn’t in Kingslanding. It is your sister, the Queen regent who must meet my demands." 

He doesn't elaborate further, and she doesn't ask him to. Instead she holds his gaze for a long minute before she slowly nods. If what he says is true, then she knows in her heart that Cersei won’t just leave them to rot. Her sister has never been very affectionate, but deep down she knows that her older sister loves her, and she’s always been close to Jaime. 

But Joffrey is strong-willed and has an unpredictable nature. He’s always been coddled and has little sense of right or wrong. He will likely run roughshod over his mother just like he’s always done. He won’t make peace with this Stark boy no matter what his mother may want or order. 

He turns to leave but pauses, as though reconsidering. He looks back at her disheartened expression and sighs.

"I'll have someone bring you some water to clean up and some breakfast."

Just the thought of food makes her stomach rumble. Ella watches him with wide eyes as he looks around her enclosure as if debating. He looks like there is something more he wants to say, something else he wants to do. It’s not _ concern _ that plays across his features, _ but perhaps something in that family. _

The moment passes.

As he turns to leave again she realizes this may be her last chance.

"Wait." She launches herself forward, but trips over her heavily soaked dress and ends up sprawled out on her hands and knees. Her face flames with color and he makes no move to help her up, which is more than fine with her. She would rather him not touch her; He’s the one who is holding her here in these gods awful conditions. 

Instead her eyes skitter around the camp looking for the one person she knows isn't there while he studies her in stony silence. 

Finally, she gathers her wits and breathes out, "Could I please see my brother?"

His shoulders tense, eyes harden. "No."

Xxx

What feels like hours later she jolts from her stupor at the sound of voices arguing in the distance. Pressing against the bars as close as she can get she hears someone yell the name Tyrell, and something that sounds a lot like _ cripple. _

Excitement courses through her when she realizes what this means. Willas Tyrell was either here or has sent a messenger. She looks over at the bucket that was left with her breakfast and prays it's the former rather than the latter. 

_Yes,_ Robb Stark was good on his word and sent her breakfast and warm water with clean rags for washing… but he also sent a bucket for her to use to relieve herself. 

A_ bucket _. 

She’d stared stupidly at it for so long that she nearly startled the guard when she asked what it was meant for. 

“Pissin’...” - the guard said easily, then seemed to remember himself and added “M’lady”. 

_ “What?” _Her screech was likely heard all the way to Casterly Rock. 

“Pissin’, oh and shittin’ if you need to go.” The guard answered slowly as if she were a simpleton. 

She had to fight to keep her voice even. “Your master thinks he’s going to just keep me in a cage and have me use a bucket like some type of _animal?_” 

Now the guard really did look at her as if she were stupid. “M’lady, I don’t know what type of animals that Kinglsanding has, but I assure you we have none here that can use a _bucket_.” 

“I’m not from Kingslanding!” Is the only response she could put together through her indignation. 

Since then she spent the afternoon stewing in her anger and resentment, before spiraling into depression, worrying about Jaime, and if his treatment included warm food and a bucket. He was likely beaten and half starved, since feeding him would just help him gather his strength to fight back. It would be foolish to keep him healthy, and that thought alone sent her into a very dramatic sob fest with her crying and blowing snot into her already filthy dress skirt. 

And now Willas was involved. The studious and shy boy she met as a child on the docks of Lannisport, now grown into a kind, gallant, brave, handsome young man of only four and twenty. Her soon to be husband. The future father of her children. Heir to the Lord of Highgarden. The man she fought with Jaime over, hells even had to fight with her father over.

Tywin easily agreed to their match before the Tourney that left him injured, but afterwards refused, too worried about his capability of giving her children. 

It took an embarrassing amount visits from his own healers to ensure her father that even though he was going to be crippled for life, he could indeed sire his own children. That along with his vast wealth and influence, and Ella’s own affection was enough for the great Tywin to agree. 

Jaime was the only one truly against their plans. Even the night they had been taken hostage, he ranted about losing sisters to undeserving men for political gain, while she accused him of being a vain idiot. To think that happened only yesterday when it feels like it happened a lifetime ago. 

Dreams of weddings and having golden haired babies can no longer occupy her thoughts.

The only thing that could truly matter now was their survival.

Xxx

Jaunty chatter floated through the air as Ella played with the frayed edges of her dress. The night had begun soundly, Stark soldiers gathered around their camp fires drinking in celebration for their victory the night before. Their easy defeat over the Kingslayer and prize stolen right out from under the Great Tywin Lannister's nose... their capture of the girl promised to the heir of Highgarden. 

Many of the men had purposely walked by her prison and whispered about the Lannister girl stuck in a cage. Some snickered while others gave her pitying glances as if they would free her if they could. They felt sorry for her, and the realization had her clenching her fists and grinding her teeth.

She didn't want their sympathy. She'd much rather have their cruel comments than pity her.

She was Lioness and she was above them all. They would see, her father would make them all pay. They would be very, very sorry for holding her here. 

But as the hours passed, the animosity she felt so strongly towards them before starts to fade. Soon she starts taking a small comfort in their voices and laughter, the warmth from their fires and the spirit of their jests. Even with her enemies near, she doesn’t feel so alone. And of course listening to their drunken stories helps to pass the time. Soon though, those voices began to fade away as the hours grow darker, the night grows colder, forcing them to drunkenly stumbled to their beds. 

All alone in the now quiet darkness she struggles to understand the purpose of keeping her here in the freezing cold. Events have tumbled one after another too quickly for her to make sense out of everything that’s happened and what the men in play are now thinking. For the life of her she cannot fathom why Robb Stark would treat her so harshly, or what she could have done to deserve being put in a cage like an animal without even a single blanket to stay warm. 

  
Didn’t her father always say the Stark’s cared for honor above everything else? _Where’s the honor in this?_ She’s just a girl with no power at all. She’s hardly even at court and knows very little of politics. Her sister the Queen barely tolerates her presence, and her nephew Joffrey cares for no one but himself.

Keeping her this way is surely meant to break her spirit, but what could she possibly do to help things once broken? Her father will take their kidnapping as an act of war but he’s not in the capitol so there’s not much he can do to stop whatever it is Cersei and Joffrey plan to do in retaliation for this affront. Robb Stark just kicked a hornets nest and she can’t understand why. 

Xxx

She isn’t sure how long she has been day dreaming, ignoring the world around her when she hears a familiar but unwelcome voice.

"You missed the fun."

When a glare is her only response his lips curve into a wicked grin.

"Well, I could offer you some wine, but only if you promise to not tell anyone." Theon offers with a leering smile, making a show to pull out his wine skin.  


“No thank you.” 

“No?” He takes a long drink. “It’s probably not the rich wine that you are used to but it’s the best we have in the camp. I stole it from Robb’s tent myself.” 

Just hearing his name sets off her temper. “Just go away and leave me in peace!”

He laughs. "Why would I want to do that, princess?" He asks, sitting back, watching her grow even angrier with a twinkle in his beady eyes. "I can show you I'm real good company. Many of the women in camp can attest to that fact, but I've never had a princess before."

"Are you stupid? I’m not a princess so go away," She hisses, then quickly adds. "Please."

Only Theon remains, taking several swigs of his wine and scrutinizing her every detail while she fights to not show how much he makes her skin crawl. 

After several uncomfortable moments he finally speaks again. "Do you think your father's gold will get you out of this, or do you think he will just ride in here like some primordial god soaked in the blood of his enemies and rescue you?" 

_ Yes _… she nearly says. Of-course her father will rescue her. Instead she keeps quiet, watching as his right hand moves forward to caress the wooden bars of her prison. 

“Do you think your crippled Tyrell _ flower _will come and save you?”

  
_Oh that does it._ “I find it funny that you have the gall to poke fun at my imprisonment when you yourself have been a prisoner for what? _ Ten _ years? _ More _? How does it feel to follow after the man who holds you hostage like a lap dog? It's a wonder you can even spare the time to visit me, what with your head always being so far up his ass that no one can see where he ends and you begin."

Theon’s caress turns into a hard grip. 

"Tough words for a little girl locked in a cage in only her shift. Don't worry though princess, even if your father decides you're not worth the effort, I hear your cripple is on his way to negotiate your release.” He barks out a laugh, his eyes mere slits and his jaw set. “Must be terrible to know the best you could do is a cripple Lord of flowers." 

Ella's eyes water as she thinks of Willas trying to negotiate on her behalf. He must be beside himself with worry, blaming himself for not coming to retrieve her from Casterly Rock. He offered and her father refused, thinking Jaime more than capable of keeping her safe. Likely assuming the noble Starks wouldn't dare to attack an innocent girl just traveling to her betrothed. Damn them for their treachery and low morals, there is _no _honor in this. 

“Oh don’t cry princess, I’m sure-”

"Theon, go back to your tent," a furious voice interrupts. 

Her head snaps up in time to watch a sulky Theon stomp in the opposite direction, only glancing back briefly to throw a look of pure loathing towards his supposed close friend. 

  
Robb doesn’t see it, his blue gaze only trained on her. “It will do you no favors to rile my men.” 

Ella blinks at him. "I didn't do anything wrong! _He started it!_"

He shrugs, cheeks rosy from too much ale looking warm and comfortable in his thick furs. "You're a Lannister so that's debatable. Keeping silent is for your benefit. I won't be able to guard you day and night." He kicks at a rock and sighs. 

She watches him swallowing. She hadn't thought of that. Never had she thought anyone would dare hurt her. Theon wasn't a real threat to her so she wasn't afraid of taunting him right back. _Perhaps she should have been. _

"Tomorrow I will have you write to your father and the Queen. Get some sleep, we're heading out at first light."

With that he turns and leaves her without a backwards glance, leaving her alone and shivering.

Xxx

  
  


A while later she lays on her side fighting the very strong urge to cry. Her sleep is constantly disrupted by random fits of shivering and teeth chattering so hard her jaw hurts. All of her toes and fingers are completely numb and her legs and back ache like she’d been run over by a carriage. After what felt like only minutes of rest, she jerks awake to find a guard opening her cage and setting a bowl before her. 

Stupidly she wipes at her eyes, struggling to get her limbs to work. Her mouth opens and quickly closes when she sees that the guard has no plans to converse with her, leaving her immediately after closing and locking the gate. 

The bowl is full with some type of steaming hot stew. Her freezing body responds slowly, coordination off as she staggers to her knees to crawl closer. 

“Thank you,” she says quietly to no one.

Xxx

Robb didn’t sleep much either, instead struggling with his conscience and worry over the beautiful golden haired girl outside his tent. 

_ She deserves this. She's a Lannister and experience has now taught him exactly what Lannisters are capable of. _

If anything, he should feel good that he is surely treating her better than the Queen and Joffrey are treating his father and sisters. Besides, this is _ their _ fault, they are the ones that unleashed this misery on his yet unvarnished world—he should be back in Winterfell with his brothers and sisters. Not marching South, sending thousands to their death all so he could capture the Kingslayer. 

He didn’t expect to find her with him. 

His mother and bannermen all agree this is a good thing, having two instead of one will surely bring Tywin to the table and to their will more quickly.

Yet somehow, he cannot feel glad when he gazes at those large innocent eyes. He doesn’t see a Lannister when he sees her, but a young, confused girl too terrified to understand the games being played all around her.

He cannot help but wonder, _ Is this how Sansa or Arya look right now? _

_ What would father say? _Doubt once again creeps in. Ned Stark will NOT be happy when he hears he's got Tywin Lannister's youngest daughter in a cage for all to see. His father will likely tan his hide for this. 

But his mothers voice comes back, and he quickly squashes any and all guilt when he remembers the reason his father cannot lecture him. He may never hear one of his father speeches again. _ Because of them. _ The Lannisters deserve this. _ All of them. _

Xxx

"I will not." Her refusal is the only way to show them that she is not weak. She’s strong, _a lioness_, and she won't be forced to do his bidding. 

"You will." His voice is as cold as his Tully blue eyes. 

Her blue-green eyes meet his in defiance. “No. I. Will. Not.” 

She almost wants to smile at the look of disbelief on his face. Robb turns away from her and crosses the tent to sink wearily into his chair, looking far older than his years.

Movement to her left catches her eye and she holds her breath as his giant dark grey direwolf enters the tent and passes by her, his tail grazing her right arm. _ Good gods that thing is huge. _

She refuses to show any fear of the beast, well aware that Robb is watching for her reaction. _He wants to see my fear. _

Standing straighter she lifts her chin defiantly. “I want to see my brother.” She pretends to be completely unperturbed when Grey Wind moves to sit by his master and faces her, licking the remnants of his latest kill off his lips. 

His eyes meet hers in challenge. “Write the letter and you shall see your brother.” 

Biting her lip she wonders how long she should pretend to consider. He stands and pours two goblets of wine, handing hers over before taking a sip from his. “You don’t want to see him? Shall I send you back to your cage then?” He stares at her over the rim of the glass, knowing he’s already won. 

She wants to tell him no, doesn't want him to know how badly she wants to see her beloved older brother. Weakness is what he is looking for, and she shouldn’t show it so quickly. 

But it’s _ Jaime _. 

"Please." One simple word.

_ Father would be so proud, _she thinks sarcastically.

He nods and goes over to his desk, pulling the chair out for her. "I'll need you to write this first."

So she does. _ Of course _ she does. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Video Trailer for this story is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EheNp8WcFQk

**Chapter 3**

**“I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.” **

** _― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights_ **

A pair of house guards in crimson cloaks and lion-crested helms stand in front of the Inn where Tyrion is joining his father. His dear uncle Kevan is of course the first to acknowledge him when he comes through the door. "Tyrion, what a surprise to see you here." 

“Uncle,” Tyrion say's, bowing. “And my lord father. What a pleasure to find you here.” 

Lord Tywin does not stir from his chair, but he does give his dwarf son a long, searching look. “I see that the rumors of your demise were unfounded.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Father. No need to leap up and embrace me, I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.” He crosses the room to their table, acutely conscious of the way his stunted legs make him waddle with every step. Whenever his father’s eyes were on him, he always becomes uncomfortably aware of all his deformities and shortcomings. “How kind of you to go to war for me,” he says, climbing into a chair as he helps himself to a cup of his father’s ale.

“By my lights, it was you who started this,” Lord Tywin replies seething. “Your brother Jaime would never have meekly submitted to capture at the hands of a _woman_.”

"Oh no, he only submits to capture at the hands of a green boy not even yet twenty. Lets not forget Ella was with him too, surely allowing her to be taken is far worse than my own embarrassing imprisonment. I did at least manage to rescue myself."

His father gives him a look full of revulsion. “The honor of our House was at stake. I had no choice but to ride. No man sheds Lannister blood with impunity. This business with Jaime and Ella only happened because of you and your never ending stupidity.”

“Well, Hear Me Roar,” Tyrion says, grinning. The Lannister words. “Truth be told, none of my blood was actually shed, although it was a close thing once or twice. Morrec and Jyck were killed. What is important now is the Starks. Lord Eddard—”

“—is our hostage,” his father interrupts. “He will lead no armies while he rots in a dungeon under the Red Keep.”

“No,” Ser Kevan agrees, “but his son has called the banners and sits outside of Riverrun with a strong host around him. He has Jaime and Ella. I would dare say he has far more than we do.”

Tyrion laughs. "By the gods he does. Sansa is pretty, but she's no Ella. I heard the younger girl escaped, the wild she-wolf. Robb Stark has far more than we do right now." 

For the first time his father agrees with him. "Yes, he does. I'd trade Ned Stark this very moment if I thought they'd give them back to us. The Stark boy is a child. No doubt he likes the sound of warhorns well enough, and the sight of his banners fluttering in the wind, but I'm far more worried about what his men want from all this." 

Tyrion catches on faster than his uncle. "You think his men may want more than simple Ned Stark returned. Perhaps, even freedom from my stupid nephew and what is sure to be a disastrous reign." 

Tywin scoffs. "Of course, which is why I'm sending you to Kingslanding in my place. I want to make sure the new King does exactly as I tell him to do and no one else. I don't want to hear that your older sister is making any drunken decisions that may go against our plans, or that idiot boy running roughshod over her like he always does." 

Tyrion agree's with his father on this. Joffrey is quite stupid and though he seems fond of Ella, he wouldn't trust his nephew to not do something incredibly terrible that ended up getting both her and Jaime killed in revenge. “What about Robb Stark? Where do you think he will take Ella and Jaime now?” 

Kevan is the first to speak. “Likely to Riverrun. It’s the safest place to guard them. The castle is situated at the end of the point of land where the Tumblestone flows into the Red Fork of the Trident. The rivers form two sides of a triangle, and when danger threatens, the Tullys open their sluice gates upstream to create a wide moat on the third side, turning Riverrun into an island. The walls rise sheer from the water, and from their towers the defenders have a commanding view of the opposite shores for many leagues around. To cut off all the approaches, a besieger must place one camp north of the Tumblestone, one south of the Red Fork, and a third between the rivers, west of the moat. There is no other way, none. The boy knows this.”

Tyrion takes a sip of his ale and waits for his fathers input, because that’s truly what matters. 

“Tyrion, you go to Kingslanding to prevent anymore foolishness that can damage our cause further. I will move on to Harrenhal to set up negotiations with Robb Stark.” 

Kevan nods as if in agreement, but then adds. “If what our spies say are true, and the Tyrell’s are in bed with Renly Baratheon, perhaps we should offer Ella’s hand to someone far more worthy of it?” 

Tyrion nearly spits out his drink. “What’s this about the Tyrell’s and _why_ haven't I heard?” 

Kevan answers him. “If what our spies say is true, then Margarey Tyrell is going to be marrying Renly Baratheon, and Loras has already started to march thousands of men from the Reach in support of putting _Renly_ on the throne.” 

Tyrion snorts. “Poor Willas. His hopes into marrying into this family are long gone." He turns to his father. "Please allow me to be the one to tell him, I for one can’t wait to see his face-” 

Tywin’s fist slams into the table spilling more than one cup of ale. "Your jokes are not appreciated. This is a betrayal that will _not_ go unpunished. That cripple will regret the day I agreed to hand him the most beautiful girl in all the Seven Kingdoms. I will send a messenger to Robb Stark to see how willing he is to make a deal, and once that is taken care of I will turn my army South and show them what Lannister's do to people who betray them.” 

Kevan hides a grin, likely imagining destroying the Tyrell's who dared to turn against them after giving them such a jewel. “The Stark boy turned down the Frey’s offer of marriage.” 

At this Tyrion chuckles. “Ah, but would he turn down marrying our sweet Ella? The boy has eyes doesn’t he?” He turns back to his father again who has that gleam in his eyes that he only has when he’s calculating something he already knows he will soon have. “Just think, your grandchildren could be ruling over the North, and once that sickly Arryn boy dies the Vale too. Edmure Tully has no heir, if the gods are good and we are lucky we could see a Lannister sitting in all three seats.” 

* * *

Catelyn huddles inside Robb's tent pretending not to stare outside towards the beautiful girl in the cage, instead focusing on Robb as he reads then re-reads the letter he'd just been handed. 

“He's late again,” She guesses. It was the Trident all over, damn that man. Her brother Edmure had called the banners; by rights, Lord Frey should have gone to join the Tully host at Riverrun, yet here he sat.

"Four thousand men,” Robb repeats, more perplexed than angry. “Lord Frey cannot hope to fight the Lannisters by himself. Surely he means to join his power to ours.”

“Does he?” Catelyn asks. She knew this very thing would happen when Robb stubbornly refused to marry one of his daughters and instead promised the man more gold than he could possibly hope to ever have. “This is why you should have agreed to the marriage, if you had, perhaps you’d have more men instead of empty promises for gold we don’t even have.”

“He’s your father’s bannerman, forgive me for thinking he’d take his oath seriously. If your sister Lysa was coming to aid us, we would have heard by now. How many birds have we sent to the Eyrie, four? It's clear she isn't sending anyone and I'd hoped Walder Frey would honor his promise.”

“Some men take their oaths more seriously than others, Robb. And Lord Walder was always friendlier with Casterly Rock than my father would have liked. One of his sons is wed to Tywin Lannister’s sister. That means little of itself, to be sure. Lord Walder has sired a great many children over the years, and he must marry them off to _someone_. Perhaps if you changed your mind, tell him you’ll consider marrying one of his dau-”

“NO.” Robb snaps back. “I will not marry a Frey girl, and I won’t lie and say I will when I won’t. But you’re right, Tywin Lannister has been arranging marriages that benefits him and hurts us. He was planning on using his daughter to solidify support from the Tyrell’s. We have her and now that cannot happen.” Robb walks over to the tent opening and stares longingly towards the girl he's holding captive. “Perhaps it is time to take a wife.” 

Catelyn’s eye’s bulge. “Oh no you don’t! She’s a Lannister! Promised to marry already. What in the seven hells is wrong with you? Did you take too many hits in that last battle?” 

Robb grins. “Mother, I’m only teasing you. I heard this morning that the Tyrell’s are backing Renly, not Tywin. Marriage to his daughter isn’t bringing the support that he thought it would.” 

Catelyn narrows her eyes. “Who told you this about the Tyrell’s?” 

“One of our own scouts is escorting a small group of lords from the Reach who plan on backing Renly and want to meet with us to gain our support in backing him as King.” 

Catelyn sighs warily. “When last I saw Renly, he was a boy no older than Bran. I do not know him, but surely he is a better King than Joffrey is. Perhaps we should unite with him and march on Kingslanding together.” 

“If we did that the Queen would kill both father and the girls before we made it to the gate.”

“If Renly truly has Tyrell support, then what are we to do?”

Robb grimaces. “I hear it’s Loras who is supporting Renly and he is the younger son. If this Lannister girl is important to Willas, maybe he will hold more sway with his father over his brother.” 

Catelyn looks at her son, seeing something there that he isn't sharing. Something that has him doubting what he just claimed. “What aren’t you telling me?” 

Robb gives a bitter smile. “Renly is marrying the Tyrell girl.” 

Catelyn mutters a curse then points a sharp finger towards the girl. “That changes everything. We need to negotiate with Tywin, not the Tyrell’s. A father’s love for his children is strong, and Mace Tyrell will want to see his daughter crowned Queen far more than he will want to rescue his son’s betrothed.” 

Robb nods. “So, we meet with the Lords, hear what they have to say. Pretend we are considering and promise to get back with them after we march-”

“March?” No one had said a word to her of marching. 

“I cannot sit here waiting for peace. It makes me look as if I were afraid to take the field again. When there are no battles to fight, men start to think of hearth and harvest, Father told me that. Even my northmen grow restless.”

“What about the girl?” 

“What about her? We take her with us. Her and the Kingslayer.” 

Now it was Catelyn grimacing, thinking of the girl out there in that cage. Traveling with her will be difficult. “Son, she doesn’t look very well. It’s too cold to keep her exposed like this. Perhaps I can take her back to Riverrun-"

“No. The girl stays with me. I need her where I can see her.” 

“But in a cage, in the cold?”

Robb shrugs. “She’s been spoiled her entire life, surely a few days outside won’t kill her. Besides, I need her humbled and willing to do as I say. You didn’t see the fight she put up before she agreed to writing those letters.” 

Catelyn shakes her head. She wanted to argue, tell him this wasn't honorable, but her boy was right. They needed the girl to obey. She was a healthy size and weight, definitely strong. She turns to her son to see him once again staring out towards the girl.

Perhaps this cruelty was for the best, perhaps this would keep her son from falling victim to a beautiful but manipulative girl... and if keeping her in a cage prevented that then who was she to interfere? She could only pray that her daughters were being treated better. 

* * *

An hour later finds Robb walking the girl towards the Kingslayer’s pen himself, ignoring the curious stares of his men as they pass by. Theon is quick to appear, and even quicker to give them an escort when he sees those golden curls and wide blue-green eyes.

Robb doesn't even turn around, simply orders, “Theon, go see if there’s a letter from Winterfell yet.”

Theon looks as if he would argue but after a moment wisely chooses not to. He hadn’t heard from Bran in several days and the guilt of leaving his little brothers behind ate at him. Ricken, wild as a winter storm had been weeping and angry by turns. He’d refused to eat, then cried and screamed for most of the night, even punched Old Nan when she tried to sing him to sleep. At one point he’d even vanished. Robb had set half the castle searching for him, and when at last they’d found him down in the crypts, Rickon had slashed at them with an old rusted iron sword he’d snatched from a dead king’s hand, and Shaggydog had come slavering out of the darkness like a green-eyed demon. Thank the gods Robb and Greywind were there to get them both back under control.

He couldn’t help but worry how Bran was dealing with them now all alone.

A tall figure suddenly steps into their path bringing them to a stop. “M’lord Umber wishes a word with you.”

“I’ll see him when I’m done.”

“Yes, M’lord.”

Ella finally chooses this moment to speak to him. “Isn’t that the one that your wolf attacked?”

Robb instantly turns around and snatches her by the arm. “What did you just say?”

Ella’s eyes turn angry as she struggles like a wildcat to get him off her. “Good gods, I heard your men joking about it." She tries to jerk her arm out of his hold. "Let. Me. Go!” 

Robb loosens his tight grip so that it isn't bruising but still very much restraining her. “No, there was just a misunderstanding between Umber and I but it was resolved.”

Ella laughs at that, still trying to free her arm. “Yes, your wolf resolved it all right. I heard he took his hand. I'm shocked he's here with you at all.”

Robb tightens his hold again. “It was only two fingers.”

“And now he’s your staunchest champion.” She taunts. 

“Yes, which is good because the heads of my Father’s guardsmen, the men who are most loyal to my family are rotting on the walls of the Red Keep, impaled on spikes thanks to you and yours.”

That finally gets her. “Oh.” He swiftly releases her arm and turns to march them on their journey, trusting her to follow two steps behind him.

Several of the men and women stop what they were doing to greet them, and Robb answers each of them with cool courtesy. She tries to ignore this, instead watching in awe as the grey clouds of smoke rise above them from hundreds of cookfires. Further out she could see mailed men lounging under trees sharpening their blades as the Stark and Tully banners fluttered from above them. 

All around the Kingslayers pen a barricade of sharpened stakes have been erected as a second barrier between him and the rest of the camp. GreyWind stood watch proudly beside the cage that held one very dirty, but still handsome Jaime Lannister.

Ella hadn’t yet noticed, too busy gawking at the new banners of the houses newly arriving to camp.

“That’s the white sun sigil for Ashford, and the Beehive for Beesbury of Honeyholt, and there’s the bull’s skull for Bulwer. Why are there houses from the Reach here?”

Robb gives a whistle for Greywind to come over. “They were coming to speak to my mother and I on behalf of Renly Baratheon.”

“Were?”

“Yes, but I suppose now they are here on behalf of your betrothed.”

She only seems to catch on to the first part, like most spoiled women only half listening when men are speaking. “Why would they be here for Renly? They are from the Reach!”

“Because of Loras.”

Her gasp is loud and her eyes full of hurt. “Loras Tyrell is backing Renly against _my family_?”

Robb can’t help but feel genuinely bad for her. She really has no idea what was going on all around her, even her soon to be family were already betraying her. Not that he blamed them. No one should follow Joffrey, but Tywin should have been more careful in choosing who to send her to.

“I’m sorry you learned this way. I thought you knew. I’ve been informed that Margaery Tyrell will be marrying Renly any day now, if she hasn’t already. They are backing Renly for the throne.”

Her eyes are now watery. “Do you think Willas knows?”

Robb’s grimace is answer enough.

Suddenly a large, rough tongue swipes from her chin to temple causing her to shriek and climb Robb like a tree.

"Oh my gods, oh stop! Robb, why are you laughing? Stop that!"

“Greywind," Robb laughs, "Stop that. Here to me boy.” The look on her face makes him burst into more laughter. 

“Seriously? You’re laughing at this?” A few curses are muttered as she climbs off him then grabs hold of his furs and wipes her wet face on them. “Your wolf, then it's your slobber to deal with. Stop laughing you jerk.”

Robb laughs even harder, actually for once enjoying himself since his family first left Winterfell but it's obviously not meant to last because a voice brings them back to their reality. “ELLA!”

Jaime Lannister obviously knew that girlish shriek and decides he has enough energy left to fight like a mad man to get free of his chains. “ELLA!”

The next few moments are a drastic change from their previous mood.

Ella, upon hearing her brother makes a run for him, causing Robb to react instantly, grabbing her around the middle, nearly sweeping her off her feet. She, in response- screeches like a banshee, kicking and clawing, while the Kingslayer thrashes against his cuff and chains, shouting threats and promises of ending him and every gods forsaken Stark left in this bloody world. 

“Stop it!” Robb thought she’d listen, imagined her calming, but before he can prevent it, she throws her head back catching him in the nose. “Son of a bit-”

Theon is suddenly there, only to end up on his knees after receiving a swift kick to the groin. “You _cunt_!” Theon shouts, in all his red-faced, nearly weeping glory.

Ella ignores the name calling and hops over Greywind like they were playing a game. Her already torn dress rips even more as she lands into a sprint right for the cage. _Good gods that girl is fast._ The next guard gets a swift, but dainty elbow to the face while the other is tackled by Greywind for his trouble (Robb isn’t even sure how or why that just happened, _whose side is he on anyway_?)

The wild, fleeing girl makes it all the way to the barricade before he's finally able to stop gawking in time to catch her again.

“LET ME GO!”

"M'lady, _please_ calm yourself."

“I’ll kill you Stark!” Jaime shouts after them. 

“Get.OFF.ME!” Another dainty elbow hits him in the gut. 

Robb ignores both Lannisters as he tries to catch his breath, using all his strength to hold the struggling girl still.

"Let her go Stark! You don't need her, you have me. My father will give you whatever you want, just let her go!" Jaime shouts. 

"You don't need either of us. You're just a mean bully who gets pleasure out of tormenting us!" 

Robb has had enough. He turns his head to look at the Kingslayer. 

“You better hope your father will give me what I want,” he tightens his hold even more, getting a squeak of pain out of the girl. “Stop fighting me.” The more she struggles the harder he squeezes. She somehow manages to stomp on his foot but he holds tight. She still continues to fight but then finally starts to cry. 

“Please, stop-” he pants, nearly too exhausted to continue. Her cries are pitiful but her still struggle doesn't stop. He holds her even tighter. "Please Ella, just stop."

When her fighting finally ceases, he tries to set her on her own two feet but her knees give out, body collapsing towards the muddy ground.

With the little strength he has left he manages to catch her, sweeping down to pick her up like a bride. 

Jaime’s curses fade into the background as he carries the too silent, too pale girl back to her cage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a link to a video trailer for my other story... please check it out if you are bored.
> 
> [Thomas Shelby & Caroline Forbes](https://vimeo.com/373724934) from [SJN](https://vimeo.com/user105268460) on [Vimeo](https://vimeo.com).


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER 4**

“People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.”  
― Andrzej Sapkowski, [The Last Wish](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2293675)

Ella couldn’t walk. Nor could she ride. In truth, she wasn’t sure what she could do other than lay there occasionally whimpering when they rode over a rough patch of terrain. 

Each time she made a noise -no matter how low- the direwolf would perk up, sniffing at her like a mother hen. His master had instructed the beast with her in the cart with his men following, leading the levies, near three thousand men: some twenty-odd knights and as many squires, three hundred mounted lances, swordsmen, and freeriders, and the rest foot, armed with spears, pikes and tridents. She knew because she'd asked. It seemed an awful lot and she had nothing else to do but ask unimportant questions while Robb rode along in front of her, answering each question in exasperation. She did it to annoy him, which was clearly working. 

She had no idea where Jaime was. If she could so much as sit up she’d look. 

But no, any type of movement brought unimaginable pain. Robb Stark had squeezed her nearly to death. That _ fucker. _

The noble Eddard Stark’s eldest son and heir had hurt a _ girl. _

She’d scream it for all of Westeros to hear if she hadn’t screamed herself raw already. 

Outriders quickly ride past the cart spying someone in the distance, Ella isn’t too sure, all she see’s are purple banners with a silver smudge and they soon come to a stop. She quickly hears the name Mallister and knows they are Robb’s men who were sent to attack the Lannister camp north of the Tumblestone where Ser Forley Prester was attempting to set up a siege.

It’s clear from the excited, cheerful shouts that Robb’s uncle has won the battle… yet another victory for the Young Wolf though he was not there, instead winning in a battle against _ her _. 

“Let’s set up over here on that dry ground. Ser Robin, call a halt and see the fires are laid and the horses tended to. I want a perimeter set up around the Kingslayer immediately.” Robb’s voice is much too close and Ella flinches back, groaning in pain as she does. 

“What about the girl?” Theon’s voice is far too close as well. 

“She is not your concern and I don’t want to hear you asking about her again.” 

Ella nearly laughs at how possessive Stark sounds. He sounds like he actually _ cares _. What a joke. 

By the time she is carried from the cart to Robb’s tent he’s seated at his war table, a pile of maps and papers in front of him, talking intently with whom she now knows is Roose Bolton and Greatjon. At first he does not notice her in the arms of the guard, his Maester standing beside them. The old man waits for several minutes until softly interrupting. 

“M’lord, I need to treat her in my tent.” 

Robb’s cold blue gaze snaps up. “No. You are to tend to her in her cage. Where she belongs.” 

Ella’s eyes water from the position she’s in and she actually feels sorry for the old Maester who seems like he wants to argue but simply can’t. “Yes, M’lord.” 

The old man sneaks her a blanket that gets snatched away rather ruthlessly a bit later. She’s nearly asleep, clinging to the stinky, itchy wool when Robb Stark, cursing like a common brawler storms into her cage and snatches it right from her grip. 

She does not withhold the name calling, _and boy has Tyrion taught her some good ones_, and he dutifully ignores it. 

Time passes and she decides she will not eat anymore. 

Why? Well the bucket of course. 

She will not continue to use a bucket with absolutely no privacy. 

She just _ won’t. _

So naturally that means refusing food and drink. 

It’s cold, she’s in pain, _ (she’s pretty sure he broke something, though the Maester won’t confirm it, likely unwilling to put a name to what he’s actually done to her) _and she’s just done. 

She even ignores when he storms into her cage to threaten Jaime. Soon though, the threats turn into offers. He will let her see Jaime if she eats, he will even allow Jaime the same food, and so on. By then though she has a fever and she’s completely unable to sit up, much less _ speak_. 

So she ignores him and lays in the dirt, sweating and shivering, wishing for the peace that comes with sleep. 

What feels like hours later, in the coldest, darkest part of the night she hears her cage open. 

  
At first, she thinks it’s Robb again, here to try to tempt her with more food. 

  
But then she hears _his_ voice and knows something is terribly not right. 

“I wondered what this golden hair would feel like,” Theon’s hands smooth over her filthy hair, catching on tangles that make her wince. She isn’t sure where her guards are, but she knows Robb ordered them not to let anyone in. She tries to cry out, but he quickly covers her mouth. “Shh, shh, I won’t hurt you. I just wanted to see what our little prisoner was up to.” 

When his hands go from her hair to her breast she nearly vomits. She tries to struggle, tries to scream, but she’s too weak to do either. Her eyes roll and she feels darkness closing in all around her. 

Suddenly there’s a terrifying growl and the sound of the gate slamming open. 

The weight she had felt on her is gone, replaced by the sounds of a fist smashing into bone. 

Theon cries out, Robb is shouting and cursing. Warm, gentle hands feel her face. Someone says her name. 

Darkness takes over completely. 

  
  


Xxx

The straw on the floor stinks of urine. There is no window, no bed, not even a slop bucket. He remembered walls of pale red stone festooned with patches of nitre, a grey door of splintered wood, four inches thick and studded with iron. He had seen them, briefly, a quick glimpse as they shoved him inside. Once the door had slammed shut, he had seen no more. The dark was absolute. He had as well been blind.

Or dead. Buried with his king. “Ah, Robert,” he murmured as his groping hand touched a cold stone wall, his leg throbbing with every motion. He remembered the jest the king had shared in the crypts of Winterfell, as the Kings of Winter looked on with cold stone eyes.

The king eats, Robert had said, and the Hand takes the shit. How he had laughed. Yet he had gotten it wrong. The king dies, Ned Stark thought, and the Hand is buried.

The dungeon is under the Red Keep, deeper than he dared imagine. He remembered the old stories about Maegor the Cruel, who murdered all the masons who labored on his castle, so they might never reveal its secrets.

He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt and his gold cloaks, the queen, the Kingslayer, Pycelle and Varys and Ser Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert’s own blood, who had run when he was needed most. Yet in the end he blamed himself. “Fool,” he cried to the darkness, “thrice-damned blind fool.”

Cersei Lannister’s face seemed to float before him in the darkness. Her hair was full of sunlight, but there was mockery in her smile. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” she whispered. Ned had played and lost, and his men had paid the price of his folly with their life’s blood. When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but the tears would not come. Even now, he was a Stark of Winterfell, and his grief and his rage froze hard inside him.

When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did his best to lie unmoving. For how long he could not say. There was no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark the walls. Ned closed his eyes and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and woke and slept again. He did not know which was more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares. The thought of Cat was as painful as a bed of nettles. He wondered where she was, what she was doing. He wondered whether he would ever see her again.

Hours turned to days, or so it seemed. He could feel a dull ache in his shattered leg, an itch beneath the plaster. When he touched his thigh, the flesh was hot to his fingers. The only sound was his breathing. After a time, he began to talk aloud, just to hear a voice. He made plans to keep himself sane, built castles of hope in the dark. Robert’s brothers were out in the world, raising armies at Dragonstone and Storm’s End. Alyn and Harwin would return to King’s Landing with the rest of his household guard once they had dealt with Ser Gregor. Catelyn would raise the north when the word reached her, and the lords of river and mountain and Vale would join her.

He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the king as he had been in the flower of his youth, tall and handsome, his great antlered helm on his head, his warhammer in hand, sitting his horse like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the dark, saw his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes. 

“Look at us, Ned,” Robert said.

“Gods, how did we come to this? You here, and me killed by a pig. We won a throne together . . . ”

I_ failed you, Robert,_ Ned thought. He could not say the words. I _lied_ to you, hid the truth. _I let them kill you._

The king heard him. “You stiff-necked fool,” he muttered, “too proud to listen. Can you eat pride, Stark? Will honor shield your children?” 

Cracks ran down his face, fissures opening in the flesh, and he reached up and ripped the mask away. It was not Robert at all; it was Littlefinger, grinning, mocking him. When he opened his mouth to speak, his lies turned to pale grey moths and took flight. 

A girl then appeared, laying on her side in the darkness. Her hair a golden mess of tangles, pale skin moist with sweat. Her breathing was nearly as labored as his. 

“Who are you? Where have you come from?" She only whimpered in response, lips parched and cracked. "What’s been done to you poor child?” 

A vision of his sister Lyanna came to him, laying bloody and broken... _**promise me Ned.** Promise me Ned,_ his sister had whispered from her bed of blood. She had loved the scent of winter roses.

“Who brought you here?” Ned attempted to reach out to her, but the sound of a familiar voice stopped him. 

"Ella!" It was _Robb_. Robb, his first born child. His sweet, dutiful son who looked so much like Cat. 

"Ella!"

"Robb!" Ned awoke, alone in his cell, crying out for his son. “Gods save me,” Ned wept. “I am going mad.”

From outside his cell came the rattle of iron chains. As the door creaked open, Ned put a hand to the damp wall and pushed himself toward the light. The glare of a torch made him squint. “Drink, Lord Eddard.” The intruder thrust a wineskin into Ned’s hands.

The voice was strangely familiar, yet it took Ned Stark a moment to place it. “Varys?” he asked groggily when it came. He touched the man’s face. “I’m not . . . not dreaming this. You’re here.” 

The eunuch’s plump cheeks were covered with a dark stubble of beard. Ned felt the coarse hair with his fingers. Varys had transformed himself into a grizzled turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour wine. “How did you . . . what sort of magician are you?”

“A thirsty one,” Varys said. “Drink, my lord.”

Ned’s hands fumbled at the skin. “Is this the same poison they gave Robert?”

“You wrong me,” Varys said sadly. “Truly, no one loves a eunuch. Not the equal of the vintage you offered me the night of the tourney, but no more poisonous than most,” he concluded, wiping his lips. “Here.” Ned tried a swallow. “Dregs.” He felt as though he were about to bring the wine back up. 

“All men must swallow the sour with the sweet. High lords and eunuchs alike. Your hour has come, my lord.” “My daughters . . . ” 

“The younger girl escaped, good thing because the new King has no love for her. Your elder daughter is alive. The Queen keeps her close. She came to court a few days ago to plead that you be spared. A pity you couldn’t have been there, you would have been touched.” 

He leaned forward intently. “I trust you realize that you are a dead man, Lord Eddard?” 

“The queen will not kill me,” Ned said. His head swam; the wine was strong, and it had been too long since he’d eaten. “Cat . . . Cat holds her brother . . . ” 

“The wrong brother,” Varys sighed. “And lost to her, in any case. She let the Imp slip through her fingers. He’s already made it to Lord Tywin. Your son has himself quite the prize though. Two of them.” 

Ned struggled to follow his words. “My son?”

“Your eldest, he’s marched an army south and captured the Kingslayer and Lord Tywin's youngest daughter Lady Ella.”

“Ella?” Ned remembered the dream, the golden haired girl and his son’s terrified voice. “My son is just a boy, he’s in Winterfell.” _ There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. _

“A boy with an army. He’s beating Tywin Lannister so I’d say your days here are numbered.”

“If that is true, slit my throat and be done with it.” He was dizzy from the wine, tired and heartsick.

“Your blood is the last thing I desire.”

Ned frowned. “When they slaughtered my guard, you stood beside the queen and watched, and said not a word.”

“And would again. I seem to recall that I was unarmed, unarmored, and surrounded by Lannister swords.”

Ned studied the eunuch’s face, searching for truth beneath the mummer’s scars and false stubble. He tried some more wine. This time it went down easier. “Can you free me from this pit?” 

“I could . . . but will I? No. Questions would be asked, and the answers would lead back to me.” Ned had expected no more. 

“You are blunt.” 

“A eunuch has no honor, and a spider does not enjoy the luxury of scruples, my lord.” 

“Would you at least consent to carry a message out for me?”

“That would depend on the message. I will gladly provide you with paper and ink, if you like. And when you have written what you will, I will take the letter and read it, and deliver it or not, as best serves my own ends.”

“Your own ends. What ends are those, Lord Varys?”

“Peace,” Varys replied without hesitation.

Xxx

As the host trooped down through the fertile lands south of the Blue Fork, Catelyn’s apprehensions grew. She was meant to ride on to her fathers castle yet something held her back. Something that likely had everything to do with her son and his growing interest in the girl. 

So she masked her fears behind a face kept still and stern, yet they were there all the same, growing with every league they crossed. Her days were anxious, her nights restless, and every raven that flew overhead made her clench her teeth.

  
She feared for her lord father, and wondered at his ominous silence. She feared for Ned and her girls, and for the sweet sons she had left behind at Winterfell. And yet there was nothing she could do for any of them, and so she made herself put all thought of them aside. _You must save your strength for Robb,_ she told herself. He is the only one you can help. You must be as fierce and hard as the north, Catelyn Tully. _You must be a Stark for true now, like your son._

She watched as Robb rode closer, at the front of the column, beneath the flapping white banner of Winterfell. Her smile at seeing her first born again after the few days apart dropped when she saw the figure riding clutched tightly in front of him. 

_The Lannister girl. _

She was as pale as death and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. But what was far more alarming was the grip Robb held on her, the way his anxious eyes constantly drifted down towards his chest where she leaned. 

"Good gods Robb what's happened to her?" 

"She's ill. We need to camp for the night and get her in a bath to break her fever. I thought you were going to ride on to Riverrun. Why did you come back?" 

She ignored his question. "She should be in a cart, why in gods name do you have her on your horse?" Catelyn's anger was far greater than her concern. 

"She's too cold and my body heat seems to help."

"It's inappropriate Robb. You need t-"

Robb's mouth twisted in anger. "What do you think will happen to father and the girls if Tywin Lannister's youngest daughter dies in our care? What do you think Willas Tyrell will do if his future bride dies after I've taken her as my hostage?" 

A cold hand clutched at Catelyn’s heart. "That will not happen. Have the men set up my tent and bring her to me."   
  


Robb's blue eyes held hers, and he seemed to sit up a little taller, and for the first time she saw him as a leader and not her son. "No. She's not to leave my side. They will set the bath up in my tent and I will care for her." 

Catelyn wanted to argue, tell her son all of the reasons as to why that is a terrible idea, how inappropriate it was, but the look on his face quieted her. Instead she said, "I'll help you." 

Robb seem to hesitate. "Are you sure?" It was clear her son didn't trust her and that was just downright insulting. 

“Never more,” Catelyn lied glibly. 

“I appreciate that mother.” Robb spurred his horse forward. His head was bare and instead of his armor he was wearing furs, his direwolf shield of Winterfell strapped to his saddle and Grey Wind padding by his side. The movement jostled the girl who made a noise of discomfort as she buried her face into her sons neck. Catelyn wanted to sneer at the audacity of such an intimate gesture. Instead she watched the breeze stir his auburn hair, so like her own, and wondered if her son had ever looked at a girl the way he was now.

"She will get better," Robb said suddenly, stubbornly, slowing his horse as they got closer to where they were setting up camp. Catelyn kept her silence and but made herself smile in agreement for him. 

Dacey Mormont, Lady Maege’s eldest daughter and heir to Bear Island, a lanky six-footer who had been given a morning star at an age when most girls were given dolls came up to take the girl from Robb so he could dismount his warhorse. 

  
"Lady Mormont, please undress the girl while I speak to my son." 

Robb looked like he would argue so Catelyn held out her hands, giving him no choice but to help her down from her horse. "I need to be with her-"

"Dacey is quite enough, besides, you do not want Tywin Lannister to hear that you undressed his daughter and bathed her. Just think Robb!" 

His face turned bright red. "Mother she is sick because of me! I will tend to her and I don't care what Tywin Lannister says or thinks!" 

"Well you should! What would your father say?" 

"My father would be furious that I harmed her to begin with!" With that her stubborn son turned and stormed towards the direction Dacey had already taken the girl. 

It took no more than two minutes before a shrill shriek rang throughout the entire camp. The sound seemed to go right through Catelyn Stark, and she found herself shivering. It was a terrible sound, a frightening sound, yet there was music in it too. Because her beautiful, sweet boy came right out of his tent, looking flustered and ashamed with a red hand print on his face that showed his unwelcome.

And as any mother would, Catelyn smiled and gave him an 'I told you so' look before brushing him aside and joining Dacey. 

Perhaps this Lannister girl wasn't so bad after all. 

Xxx

Hours later as Ella tossed and turned in his furs, Robb watched the girl. She would occasionally wake to call him a turd, or she'd ask for water. She'd cry for her father and even once cried out for Cersei. Robb couldn't help the disbelieving laugh at that, because he'd spent some time around that woman and couldn't imagine anyone calling for her while sick. The Queen was about as comforting as a splinter. She'd ask for Jaime and then tell him he was a bully. At that he'd rub his still sore cheek and wonder who was really the bully here, because no girl had ever slapped him as hard as she had. 

Then finally, she opened her eyes and very calmly told him she didn't appreciate the way he looked at her.

"What do you mean?" He'd barely fallen asleep in his uncomfortable chair and woken to the sound of her tossing and turning. 

"The way you watch me. I don't like it." She repeated, face pinched in pain and still drenched in sweat. Her fever had yet to break. 

"I'm only watching over you to take care of you-"

"No. It's not like that. Not like you're taking care of me, and it's not like the way most boys tend to look at pretty girls. You look at me like I belong to you, like I'm yours and you just haven't declared it yet. Like it's an inevitability." 

Robb's mouth opened and shut, unable to deny or defend himself. 

"I don't like it!" She declared, then she promptly threw up. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

“A woman who loved him would have to learn obedience, and I was not yet ready to be an obedient wife.”  
― Philippa Gregory, [The White Princess](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/17305270)

* * *

The old maester stood on the windswept balcony outside his chambers. It was here the ravens came, after a long flight. Their droppings speckled the gargoyles that rose twelve feet tall on either side of him, a hellhound and a wyvern, two of the thousand that brooded over the walls of the ancient fortress. When first he came to Dragonstone, the army of stone grotesques had made him uneasy, but as the years passed he had grown used to them. Now he thought of them as old friends. Especially during uncertain times like this.

“Maester Cressen, the King is waiting for you,” Pylos spoke softly, as if loath to disturb Cressen’s solemn meditations.

Castles are not friendly places for the frail, Cressen was reminded as he descended the turnpike stairs of Sea Dragon Tower. Lord Stannis would be found in the Chamber of the Painted Table, atop the Stone Drum, Dragonstone’s central keep, so named for the way its ancient walls boomed and rumbled during storms. To reach him they must cross the gallery, pass through the middle and inner walls with their guardian gargoyles and black iron gates, and ascend more steps than Cressen cared to contemplate. Young men climbed steps two at a time; for old men with bad hips, every one was a torment. But Lord Stannis would not think to come to him, so the maester resigned himself to the ordeal. He had Pylos to help him, at the least, and for that he was grateful.

Halfway there they saw Ser Davos who wasted no words for greeting.

“It is as you warned him. They will not rise, Maester. Not for him. They do not love him.” No, Cressen thought. Nor will they ever. He is strong, able, just . . . aye, just past the point of wisdom . . . yet it is not enough. It has never been enough. 

“You spoke to them all?”

“All? No. Only those that would see me. They do not love me either, these highborns. To them I’ll always be the Onion Knight.”

Cressen sighed. “Anything else?”

“I broke bread with Gulian Swann and old Penrose, and the Tarths consented to a midnight meeting in a grove. The others—well, Beric Dondarrion is gone missing, some say dead, and Lord Caron is with Renly. Bryce the Orange, of the Rainbow Guard.”

“The Rainbow Guard?”

“Renly’s made his own Kingsguard,” the one time smuggler explained, “But these seven don’t wear white. Each one has his own color. Loras Tyrell’s their Lord Commander.” It was just the sort of notion that would appeal to Renly Baratheon; a splendid new order of knighthood, with gorgeous new raiment to proclaim it. Even as a boy, Renly had loved bright colors and rich fabrics, and he had loved his games as well. “Look at me!” he would shout as he ran laughing through the halls of Storm’s End. “Look at me, I’m a dragon,” or “Look at me, I’m a wizard,” or “Look at me, look at me, I’m the rain god. Look at me, I’m a king,” Cressen thought sadly. Oh, Renly, Renly, dear sweet child, do you know what you are doing? And would you care if you did? Is there anyone who cares for him but me?

“What reasons did the lords give for their refusals?” he asked Ser Davos.

“Well, as to that, some gave me soft words and some blunt, some made excuses, some promises, some only lied.” He shrugged. “In the end words are just wind.”

“You could bring him no hope?”

“Only the false sort, and I’d not do that,” Davos said. “He had the truth from me.”

“Ser Davos, truth can be a bitter draught, even for a man like Lord Stannis. He thinks only of returning to King’s Landing in the fullness of his power, to tear down his enemies and claim what is rightfully his. Yet now . . .”

“If he takes this meager host to King’s Landing, it will be only to die. He does not have the numbers. I told him as much, but you know his pride.” Davos held up his gloved hand. “My fingers will grow back before that man bends to sense.”

The old man sighed. “You have done all you could. Now I must add my voice to yours.” Wearily, they resumed their walk.

Lord Stannis Baratheon’s refuge was a great round room with walls of bare black stone and four tall narrow windows that looked out to the four points of the compass. In the center of the chamber was the great table from which it took its name, a massive slab of carved wood fashioned at the command of Aegon Targaryen in the days before the Conquest. The Painted Table was more than fifty feet long, perhaps half that wide at its widest point, but less than four feet across at its narrowest. Aegon’s carpenters had shaped it after the land of Westeros, sawing out each bay and peninsula until the table nowhere ran straight. On its surface, darkened by near three hundred years of varnish, were painted the Seven Kingdoms as they had been in Aegon’s day; rivers and mountains, castles and cities, lakes and forests.

There was a single chair in the room, carefully positioned in the precise place that Dragonstone occupied off the coast of Westeros, and raised up to give a good view of the 7 tabletop. Seated in the chair was a man in a tight-laced leather jerkin and breeches of roughspun brown wool.

When Maester Cressen entered, he glanced up. “I sent for you half an hour ago.” There was no hint of warmth in his voice; there seldom was. Stannis Baratheon, Lord of Dragonstone and by the grace of the gods rightful heir to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, was broad of shoulder and sinewy of limb, with a tightness to his face and flesh that spoke of leather cured in the sun until it was as tough as steel. Hard was the word men used when they spoke of Stannis, and hard he was. Though he was not yet five-and-thirty, only a fringe of thin black hair remained on his head, circling behind his ears like the shadow of a crown. His brother, the late King Robert, had grown a beard in his final years. Maester Cressen had never seen it, but they said it was a wild thing, thick and fierce. As if in answer, Stannis kept his own whiskers cropped tight and short. They lay like a blue-black shadow across his square jaw and the bony hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were open wounds beneath his heavy brows, a blue as dark as the sea by night. His mouth would have given despair to even the drollest of fools; it was a mouth made for frowns and scowls and sharply worded commands, all thin pale lips and clenched muscles, a mouth that had forgotten how to smile and had never known how to laugh. Sometimes when the world grew very still and silent of a night, Maester Cressen fancied he could hear Lord Stannis grinding his teeth half a castle away.

“This is a large castle and I’m a very old man.”

“Yes, and don’t forget sickly. You should be in bed.” Stannis had never learned to soften his speech, to dissemble or flatter; he said what he thought, and those that did not like it could be damned. “I’m sure you already know what I’m going to say. You always do, don’t you?”

“I would be of no help to you if I didn’t. I saw Davos in the hall.”

“And he told all, I suppose? I should have the man’s tongue shortened to go with his fingers.”

“He would make you a poor envoy if you do that.”

“He’s already made me a poor envoy in any case. The storm lords will not rise for me. It seems they do not like me, and the justice of my cause means nothing to them. The cravenly ones will sit behind their walls waiting to see how the wind rises and who is likely to triumph. The bold ones have already declared for Renly. For Renly!” He spits out the name like poison on his tongue.

“Your brother has been the Lord of Storm’s End these past thirteen years. These lords are his sworn bannermen—”

“His,” Stannis shouts, “when by rights they should be mine! I never asked for Dragonstone. I never wanted it. I took it because Robert’s enemies were here and he commanded me to root them out. I built his fleet and did his work, dutiful as a younger brother should be to an elder, as Renly should be to me. And what was Robert’s thanks? He names me Lord of Dragonstone, and gives Storm’s End and its incomes to Renly. Storm’s End belonged to House Baratheon for three hundred years; by rights it should have passed to me when Robert took the Iron Throne.”

It was an old grievance, deeply felt, and never more so than now. Here was the heart of his lord’s weakness; for Dragonstone, old and strong though it was, commanded the allegiance of only a handful of lesser lords, whose stony island holdings were too thinly populated to yield up the men that Stannis needed. Even with the sellswords he had brought across the narrow sea from the Free Cities of Myr and Lys, the host camped outside his walls was far too small to bring down the power of House Lannister.

“Robert did you an injustice,” Maester Cressen says carefully, “yet he had sound reasons. Dragonstone had long been the seat of House Targaryen. He needed a man’s strength to rule here, and Renly was but a child.”

“He is a child still,” Stannis declares, his anger ringing loud in the empty hall, “a thieving child who thinks to snatch the crown off my brow. What has Renly ever done to earn a throne? He sits in council and jests with Littlefinger, and at tourneys he dons his splendid suit of armor and allows himself to be knocked off his horse by a better man. That is the sum of my brother Renly, who thinks he ought to be a king. I ask you, why did the gods inflict me with brothers?”

“I cannot answer for the gods.”

“You seldom answer at all these days, it seems to me. Who maesters for Renly? Perchance I should send for him, I might like his counsel better. What do you think this maester said when my brother decided to steal my crown? What counsel did your colleague offer to this traitor blood of mine?”

“It would surprise me if Lord Renly sought counsel, Your Grace.” The youngest of Lord Steffon’s three sons had grown into a man bold but heedless, who acted from impulse rather than calculation. In that, as in so much else, Renly was like his brother Robert, and utterly unlike Stannis.

“Your Grace,” Stannis repeats bitterly. “You mock me with a king’s style, yet what am I king of? Dragonstone and a few rocks in the narrow sea, there is my kingdom.” He descends the steps of his chair to stand before the table, his shadow falling across the mouth of the Blackwater Rush and the painted forest where King’s Landing now stood. There he stood, brooding over the realm he sought to claim, so near at hand and yet so far away.

“Tonight I am to sup with my lords bannermen, such as they are. Celtigar, Velaryon, Bar Emmon, the whole paltry lot of them. A poor crop, if truth be told, but they are what my brothers have left me. That Lysene pirate Salladhor Saan will be there with the latest tally of what I owe him, and Morosh the Myrman will caution me with talk of tides and autumn gales, while Lord Sunglass mutters piously of the will of the Seven. Celtigar will want to know which storm lords are joining us. Velaryon will threaten to take his levies home unless we strike at once. What am I to tell them? What must I do now?”

“Your true enemies are the Lannisters, my lord,” Maester Cressen answers. “If you and your brother were to make common cause against them—”

“I will not treat with Renly,” Stannis answers in a tone that brooks no argument. “Not while he calls himself a king.”

“Not Renly, then,” the maester yieldes. His lord was stubborn and proud; when he had set his mind, there was no changing it. “Others might serve your needs as well. I’ve recently heard that Eddard Stark’s son is looking for allies, and he already has the power of the North and Riverrun behind him.”

“A green boy,” Stannis says back, once again grinding his teeth.

“Yes, a green boy who has won every battle, and taken not one but two of Tywin Lannister’s children.”

Stannis lets out a bark of laughter that nearly startles the old man. “I’m sure old Tywin wasn’t too happy about that. Isn’t the youngest his favorite?”

“Yes. I remember seeing her a few years ago, pretty little thing. Nothing like that viper, the Queen. All flowers and sunshine young Ella was.”

Stannis grows serious. “She was supposed to wed the cripple Tyrell boy. The young wolf has created more enemies than just the old lion. I don’t think I want to align myself with a green boy who thinks it's good warfare to kidnap innocent girls.”

The maester disagrees. “The Kingslayer is far from innocent and I think Tywin may be forced to treat with the boy now that he has his children.”

Stannis thinks it over, gritting his teeth. “Perhaps you are right. I will send a raven on to the boy and see if we can meet. I’ll offer to help rescue his sisters and father if he agrees not to make any deals with Tywin or Renly. Ned Stark has thus far been loyal to me and maybe his son will make a good ally.”

The maester nods and goes to begin his work. 

Xxx

When Ella’s fever finally breaks, she awakes to the smell of blueberries and Robb sitting at his desk writing with a plate of tarts beside him.

“How did you get tarts made all the way out here?”

Robb looks up and grins, then moves to sit in the chair beside the bed with the plate in his hands. “Your cousin said they were your favorite. There’s an inn nearby that made them.”

“My cousin?”

“Sir Alton. He was captured.”

Ella’s appetite disappears as quickly as it came. “Sir Alton? You have him? Where is he being kept?”

Robb's smile at seeing her awake withers. “I’ve got him with the rest of the lords. He’s being treated fairly.”

It was the best she could hope for. She’d glimpsed the other prisoners and they didn’t seem to be ill treated or starved. Far better off than Jaime was being treated for sure.

“You asked him about me?”

Robb’s cheeks grow red. “Well, how else would I learn your favorite foods when you’re too busy calling me names or cursing me to all the seven hells?”

Irritated she sits up. “Because you’re holding me prisoner! And _abusing_ me!”

“Abusing you?!” He scoffs, nearly dropping the plate. “That’s ridiculous. It's you who hit me!”

“Because you attacked me first!”

“No, I did not!” Robb stands, shoving the plate into her hands. Ella looks down at it like she’s seriously considering using it as a weapon or about to throw it back at him. 

He raises his eyebrow in challenge but takes a step backwards getting ready to dodge it if need be. 

Thankfully Catelyn chooses that moment to enter the tent interrupting them and the soon to be violence. 

“Robb, I need to speak to you outside.”

Ella shoves a tart into her mouth as she watches him go, cheeks warm and embarrassed to be caught arguing with the stupid boy. 

"What is wrong with you?" She mumbles to herself, picking at the food, unsure of her own feelings. She doesn't understand the heat she feels when yelling at him, and what it does to her to have him red-faced and yelling back at her. Something about arguing with him so passionately and being caught makes her feel ashamed. Like she's doing something wrong. Which makes no sense since all she's done is fight with the boy since he first took her. 

Yet, somehow, _this_ felt _different. _

_Xxx_

Robb obediently follows his mother outside, frowning at the rain and the state of her. 

“Mother, you're soaked. You should have sent one of your guards to retrieve me.”

“It is only water, Robb,” Catelyn replies, ignoring how her hair hangs wet and heavy, a loose strand stuck to her forehead, and she could imagine how ragged and wild she must look, but for once she did not care. The southern rain was soft and warm. She liked the feel of it on her face, gentle as a mother’s kisses. It took her back to her childhood, to long grey days at Riverrun. This is almost enough to make her forget all of her current problems. If only for a moment. 

He sighs and turns to look back towards his tent, eager to go back to the girl. Catelyn wants shake some sense into the boy. 

“This won’t take but a moment. I’d like to take the girl on to my father's castle. We are close and I see no reason for her to remain here longer than necessary.” 

Robb bares his teeth, sick and tired of this. “You won’t be taking her anywhere and we won’t be having this conversation again!” 

“Robb! See reason! The girl can ride alone now and we aren’t far. She needs to be in a real bed beside a real fire. There’s a Maester and actual rooms with doors that lock where she will be safe.” 

“I. Said. No. I want you to ride on to meet with Renly. I'm the one leading this army and I say you’ll be leaving before nightfall. The guards will come and get you once the rains break.” Catelyn has no chance to argue because her stubborn, bull-headed son turns his back on her and goes back to the girl who shouldn’t even be there. 

Xxx

The next morning finds the rains have stopped and with the sun comes laughter, particularly Ella’s as she dodges Robb’s fourth attempt at putting a spoonful of disgusting oatmeal in her mouth.

“Ella!” 

“No! That stuff is horrid and I’m eating no more of it!” 

Robb’s face looks innocent, so she doesn’t expect his swift tickle attack that has her opening her mouth just enough for him to shove the spoon in along with a huge amount of oatmeal with it. 

She cries out in protest, and steals the spoon from him. The mischievous glint in her eyes makes him scoot back a little.

"Don't even think about it," he warns, doing his best to sound stern. 

"I wouldn't dream of it Milord," she says as she reaches over for the glass of water and takes a dainty sip, drawing his attention to her plump pink lips. Not wanting to become too distracted, he steals the spoon back and scoops more and offers it to her with a raised brow.

Ella gives in and accepts the offered bite with grace and absolutely no dignity whatsoever. Robb grins in triumph, just as a throat is cleared behind them.

"Milord, there is a raven for you." the guard looks hesitantly between the girl perched on his bed and his leader, who is clearly unhappy with the interruption.

Robb sighs as he stands and retrieves the letter, immediately dismissing the poor boy.

Ella wants to ask who it's from, but holds her tongue. Even though he had been kind to her since she had awoken in his bed, she was still very much aware of her predicament and that she and her brother are in fact hostages. 

Robb reads the letter and tenses, gripping it so tightly she is sure it's about to tear. She wants to ask what's wrong but decides against it. She doesn’t have to wait long. 

"Your betrothed is on his way. You must write to him and advise him against it. He has nothing to offer me that would make me give up the only leverage I have to get my father and sisters back." His voice is so cold that her heart begins to race. 

Gulping she finds her voice. "But he's to be my husband- he won't accept that."

He narrows his eyes at her. 

"Do as you wish, but know that I will not take kindly to any man thinking they can stroll into my camp and buy you. He will end up sharing a cell with the Kingslayer."

If that threat was meant to frighten her into submission he’s very mistaken. Instead her temper flares. 

“What is _ wrong _ with you? You were so kind to me last night and then this morning and now you have to ruin it over what?” Ella struggles to understand why she’s so angry and why he’s so angry. Surely they both expected this to happen sooner or later. Of course Willas is coming! They’ve known he was coming for _days_. 

“What’s wrong with me is your cripple is coming to MY camp!” Robb shouts back. 

Ella struggles to calm down, _ struggles to just understand _. “I don't know why you're being so cruel. I thought things had changed... I thought -" she takes a breath and shakes her head in disbelief. "I would like to go back to my cell now -Milord." She mocks.

A rock settles in the pit of his stomach as he processes her words.

"Your cell has been taken down. You will no longer be staying out in the cold. I was planning on keeping you here with me." His voice changes from angry to hopeful as he waits for her reaction.

"With _ you? _” She asks, then sees his honest, hopeful expression. “You're serious?" She asks in disbelief.

"Well, yes. I can't have you wondering freely, and I don't trust the men not to harm you. It's for your protection." He tries to sound convincing but he has a feeling she sees right through him.

"I think I'll take my chances. If you won't put me back in my cell then I'd like another tent. Keep me close if you prefer but I will not stay here." Her voice sounds bitter and he wonders if she's upset because she wants to go to her betrothed, with Willas_-he growls internally._

This causes something ugly to form in the pit of his stomach and he wonders what this new feeling is, because he's never wanted to murder a stranger so badly as he does now.

Is he _ jealous_?

No.

No.

_No._

Well, _ maybe._

“Ella,” he steps forward, unsure what he’s doing. She doesn’t move backwards and doesn’t look like she’s about to attack him so he risks another step and then another, so close that he can feel her breath on his face, “I don’t want us to be apart. I want you here, with me.”He struggles to say these words and she begins gasping, and for a second he’s worried she’s so overcome with his honest, heartfelt words that she’s unable to breathe. 

Then she clutches her belly and bends over and she _laughs_ . 

He’s so shocked that it takes him a few moments to process what is happening. 

“Oh goodness. You cannot be serious. I am your hostage. You KIDNAPPED ME! You’re keeping my brother filthy, half starved - in a cage. You kept _me_ in cage! What exactly do you think is happening right now?” 

Now he’s mad. Gods damn her! He knows she feels what he does and she’s going to stop pretending she doesn’t. 

Without thinking it through he reaches out and grabs her shoulders with both hands, forcing her into his arms and his lips over hers. 

The kiss lasts for a few seconds before she yanks away violently, cursing him and then slapping him hard across the face. He has zero time to recover before she’s on him, back in his arms this time kissing him back.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note.. in this story Jon has not taken his vows yet. He arrived at the wall and discovered his uncle is missing and was waiting for his return before taking that final step. Then he learns of Ned's capture and is struggling with wanting to leave to join with Robb. Also, if you've read the books you'll recognize that some of these chapters are leaning more towards the book version than the show which will continue. 
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to dino_1998 for getting me to update.

**Chapter 6**

The course of true love never did run smooth.  
_\- William Shakespeare_

Morning sunlight beamed across the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its rocky way along the floor of the valley. Beneath the trees, horses whickered softly and pawed at the moist, leafy ground, while men made nervous jests in hushed voices. Now and again, she heard the chink of spears, the faint metallic slither of chain mail, a shout muffled by the wind. 

Ella took a few steps towards the sound. 

“You are to go no further,” Hallis Mollen, Robb’s captain of guards ordered. 

She had thirty men around her, charged to keep her unharmed and see her safely to her father in exchange for his sisters if the fighting went against them. Robb had wanted fifty; Ella had insisted that ten would be enough, that he would need every sword for the fight. They made their peace at thirty, neither happy with it.

Just why she was concerned with his safety was another matter entirely, one that she isn’t sure she’s ready to face yet. 

And how could she face it? He is still her enemy, and the enemy of her family. For gods sake his silly, ignorant father has told the entire kingdom nothing but lies about her sister, encouraging war to overthrow Joffrey from his birthright. 

The kisses shared between them doesn’t change that. 

_Nothing_ can change that. 

Especially not after he took her and Jaime. 

He _ hurt _her. 

But he _ cares _ for her too. 

No.

Robb is just a boy infatuated by a pretty girl, it’s not real and whatever feelings she thinks she is developing on her end are just because of her current predicament. But the fear she feels for him is real. Perhaps even Robb feels the same, though if he were frightened he gave no sign of it. Ella watched him carefully before he left for battle as he moved among the men, touching one on the shoulder, sharing a jest with another, helping a third to gentle an anxious horse. His armor clinking softly when he moved, his head bare. She watched a breeze stir his auburn hair, and shivered at how soft it had felt between her fingers while they kissed. 

Did kissing always feel like that? If so, why hadn’t it felt that way with Willas? Was something _ wrong _with _her_? Why does she only feel this stomach clenching ache when it comes to Robb?

Robb. Who is so close yet so far away. Is he safe? _ Will _ he be safe?

She knows his host was greater than it had been just a week prior. Lord Jason Mallister had brought his power out from Seagard to join them as they swept around the headwaters of the Fork and galloped south, and others had crept forth as well, hedge knights and small lords and masterless men-at-arms who had fled north after Gregor Clegane and his men swept across the lands burning and pillaging. They had driven their horses as hard as they dared to reach this place before her father had word of their coming, and now the hour was at hand.

Ella had watched Robb mount up, one of the Frey boys holding his horse for him. She handed him his helm, anxious and awestruck by how handsome he looked on his tall grey stallion with Greywind by his side. 

“Come back,” is all she said. Robb smiled, blue eyes warm and full of some emotion she couldn’t possibly understand.

“I will,” his words were a promise and a threat all at once. Yes, he would return for her. She knew that. If he survives, he will come for her. 

Just as she knew she wouldn’t leave this ridge until he did. 

Xxx

“Are you well, Snow?” Lord Mormont asked, scowling.

“Well,” his raven squawked. “Well.”

“I am, my lord,” Jon lied . . . loudly, as if that could make it true. “And you?”

Mormont frowned. “A dead man tried to kill me. How well could I be?” He scratched under his chin. His shaggy grey beard had been singed in the fire, and he’d hacked it off.

The pale stubble of his new whiskers made him look old, disreputable, and grumpy. “You do not look well. How is your hand?”

“Healing.” Jon flexed his bandaged fingers to show him. He had burned himself more badly than he knew throwing the flaming drapes, and his right hand was swathed in silk halfway to the elbow. At the time he’d felt nothing; the agony had come after. His cracked red skin oozed fluid, and fearsome blood blisters rose between his fingers, big as roaches. “The maester says I’ll have scars, but otherwise the hand should be as good as it was before.”

“A scarred hand is nothing. On the Wall, you’ll be wearing gloves often as not.”

“As you say, my lord.” It was not the thought of scars that troubled Jon; it was the rest of Maester Aemon had given him milk of the poppy, yet even so, the pain had been hideous. At first it had felt as if his hand were still aflame, burning day and night. Only plunging it into basins of snow and shaved ice gave any relief at all. Jon thanked the gods that no one but Ghost saw him writhing on his bed, whimpering from the pain. And when at last he did sleep, he dreamt, and that was even worse. In the dream, the corpse he fought had blue eyes, black hands, and his uncle’s face, but he dared not tell Mormont that.

“Dywen and Hake returned last night,” the Old Bear said. “They found no sign of your uncle, no more than the others did.”

“I know.” Jon had dragged himself to the common hall to sup with his friends, and the failure of the rangers’ search had been all the men had been talking of.

“You know,” Mormont grumbled. “How is it that everyone knows everything around here?” He did not seem to expect an answer. “It would seem there were only the two of . . . of those creatures, whatever they were, I will not call them men. And thank the gods for that. Any more and . . . well, that doesn’t bear thinking of. There will be more, though. I can feel it in these old bones of mine, and Maester Aemon agrees. The cold winds are rising. Summer is at an end, and a winter is coming such as this world has never seen.”

Winter is coming. The Stark words had never sounded so grim or ominous to Jon as they did now. “My lord,” he asked hesitantly, “it’s said there was a bird last night . . . ”

“There was. What of it?”

“I had hoped for some word of my father. Or perhaps something from Robb.”

Mormont grimaced, not particularly caring for what he had to tell the boy next. “There’s been no more news on your father, but I did receive a letter from the Queen.” 

“The Queen?”

“Yes. It seems your brother has captured her sister and brother.” 

“Captured her sister and brother?” Jon felt like the bird, not understanding but parroting back words that made no sense. 

“The Kingslayer and Tywin’s youngest daughter the Lady Ella. Your brother has captured them and the Queen is demanding that you not be allowed to take your oath. She knows once you make that vow you will be out of their reach. I can only assume she is planning to use you as a hostage.” 

“A hostage in return for this Lady Ella?” 

“Ella,” taunted the old raven, bobbing its head as it walked across Mormont’s shoulders. “Ella.”

  
Jon ignored it, feeling his face heat, “Are my father and sisters not good enough leverage that she needs the bastard that nobody wants too?” 

“Ella, Ella, Ella,” the bird squawked. 

The Lord Commander reached up to pinch its beak shut, but the raven hopped up on his head, fluttered its wings, and flew across the chamber to light above a window. “Grief and noise,” Mormont grumbled. “That’s all they’re good for, ravens. Why I put up with that pestilential bird . . . I won’t just hand you over even if you aren’t a brother yet. They are busy fighting a war and I don’t think they have the resources to send men all the way up here to capture you. I do think that it would be safer if you’d take your vows sooner rather than later so that they know you’re off limits.” 

Jon scrubbed his uninjured hand through his hair. “I wanted to wait until my Uncle returned to take my vows. I need to write to Robb and see what he’s doing to protect Bran and Rickon. They are far more important than a bastard at the Wall.” 

Mormont nodded. “We have white shadows in the woods and unquiet dead stalking our halls, I care not for a vengeful Queen who thinks she can force the Watch to do her bidding. Write to your brother and let me know what you decide.” 

  
  


Xxx

  
  


Robb dragged his body back to his tent. He was worn out both mentally and physically from the battle, Greywind the only thing keeping him upright once his feet touched the ground. 

He had hoped to see Ella on his return but left orders that she be escorted to the safety of the camp if he didn’t make it back before sundown. He was thankful they actually obeyed, he would rather her not see him returning from the battlefield caked in blood, dirt and sweat. 

She of course had other ideas, because when he walked into his tent he found her already there bent over a tub helping the Frey boy fill it up. Her relieved smile at seeing him nearly knocked him to his knees. She stood up and swiftly crossed the tent, slyly checking him over for injuries. 

“You came back!” 

Robb laughed. “I said I would. You should be in bed,” he looked at the heated steam coming from the tub then over to the plate of food and ale waiting for him at his desk, “-You didn’t have to do this.” 

She shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I didn't have much else to do." Her eyes traveled over his bloody armor. "I’ll go so you can get cleaned up.” 

As she passed by him he couldn’t help but reaching out for her hand, grasping it in his own. “This,” he nodded towards the tub and food, “Means a lot. Thank you my lady”. 

Her answering smile was shy, “I am glad that you're okay.” 

Robb couldn’t help himself. He brought her dainty hand up to his lips and kissed the back of it. “I’ll see you when I’m clean.” 

She nearly giggled before catching herself and instead pulled away and swatted him. “You're filthy and you stink! Keep your lips to yourself!”

Robb’s blue eyes blazed in response, and before she could move he buried his sweaty hair into her neck, rubbing it against her soft skin causing her to shriek in indignation. 

Xxx

Flea Bottom had a stench to it, a stink of pigsties and stables and tanner’s sheds, mixed in with the sour smell of wine sinks and cheap whorehouses. Arya wound her way through the maze dully. It was not until she caught a whiff of bubbling brown coming through a pot-shop door that she realized her newly caught pigeon was gone. It must have slipped from her belt as she ran, or someone had stolen it and she’d never noticed. For a moment she wanted to cry. She’d have to walk all the way back to the Street of Flour to find another one that plump.

Far across the city, bells began to ring.

Arya glanced up, listening, wondering what the ringing meant this time.

Two boys close to Arya’s age scampered past, splashing through a puddle. An old woman cursed them, but they kept right on going. Other people were moving too, heading up the hill to see what the noise was about. Arya ran after the slower boy.

“Where you going?” she shouted when she was right behind him. “What’s happening?”

He glanced back without slowing. “The gold cloaks is carryin’ him to the sept.”

“Who?” she yelled, running hard.

“The Hand! They’ll be taking his head off!”

A passing wagon had left a deep rut in the street. The boy leapt over, but Arya never saw. She tripped and fell, face first, scraping her knee open on a stone and smashing her fingers when her hands hit the hard-packed earth. Needle tangled between her legs. She sobbed as she struggled to her knees. The thumb of her left hand was covered with blood. When she sucked on it, she saw that half the thumbnail was gone, ripped off in her fall. Her hands throbbed, and her knee was all bloody too.

“Make way!” someone shouted from the cross street. “Make way for my lords!” 

It was all Arya could do to get out of the road before they ran her down, four guardsmen on huge horses, pounding past at a gallop.

Everyone was moving in the same direction, all in a hurry to see what the ringing was all about. The bells seemed louder now, clanging, calling. Arya joined the stream of people.

“—the King’s Hand, Lord Stark. They’re carrying him up to Baelor’s Sept.”

Arya grew frantic. Forcing her way to the front of the crowd, she was shoved up against the stone of a plinth. She looked up at Baelor the Blessed, sliding her stick sword through her belt, Arya began to climb. Her broken thumbnail left smears of blood on the painted marble, but she made it up, and wedged herself in between the king’s feet.

That was when she saw her father.

Lord Eddard stood on the High Septon’s pulpit outside the doors of the sept, supported between two of the gold cloaks. He was dressed in a rich grey velvet doublet with a white wolf sewn on the front in beads, and a grey wool cloak trimmed with fur, but he was thinner than Arya had ever seen him, his long face drawn with pain. He was not standing so much as being held up; the cast over his broken leg was grey and rotten.

When the bell ceased to toll, a quiet slowly settled across the great plaza, and her father lifted his head and began to speak, his voice so thin and weak she could scarcely make him out. People behind her began to shout out, “What?” and “Louder!” The man in the black-and-gold armor stepped up behind Father and prodded him sharply. 

Arya wanted to shout for them to leave him alone, but she knew no one would listen. She chewed her lip.

Her father raised his voice and began again. “I am Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the King,” he said more loudly, his voice carrying across the plaza, “and I come before you to confess my treason in the sight of gods and men.”

“No,” Arya whimpered. Below her, the crowd began to scream and shout. Taunts and obscenities filled the air. Sansa had hidden her face in her hands.

Her father raised his voice still higher, straining to be heard. “I betrayed the faith of my king and the trust of my friend, Robert,” he shouted. “I swore to defend and protect his children, yet before his blood was cold, I plotted to depose and murder his son and seize the throne for myself. Let the High Septon and Baelor the Beloved and the Seven bear witness to the truth of what I say: Joffrey Baratheon is the one true heir to the Iron Throne, and by the grace of all the gods, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.”

A stone came sailing out of the crowd. Arya cried out as she saw her father hit. The gold cloaks kept him from falling. Blood ran down his face from a deep gash across his forehead. More stones followed. One struck the guard to Father’s left. Another went clanging off the breastplate of the knight in the black-and-gold armor. Two of the Kingsguard stepped in front of Joffrey and the queen, protecting them with their shields.

Her hand slid beneath her cloak and found Needle in its sheath. She tightened her fingers around the grip, squeezing as hard as she had ever squeezed anything. **Please, ****gods, keep him safe, ** she prayed. ** Don’t let them hurt my father.**

A thousand voices were screaming, but Arya never heard them. Prince Joffrey . . . no, King Joffrey . . . stepped out from behind the shields of his Kingsguard. “My mother bids me let Lord Eddard take the black, and Lady Sansa has begged mercy for her father.” He looked straight at Sansa then, and smiled, and for a moment Arya thought that the gods had heard her prayer, until Joffrey turned back to the crowd and said, “But they have the soft hearts of women. So long as I am your king, treason shall never go unpunished. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!”

The crowd roared, and Arya felt the statue of Baelor rock as they surged against it. Lords and knights moved aside as he stepped through, tall and fleshless, a skeleton in iron mail, the King’s Justice. Dimly, as if from far off, Arya heard her sister scream. Sansa had fallen to her knees, sobbing hysterically. Ser Ilyn Payne climbed the steps of the pulpit.

Arya wriggled between Baelor’s feet and threw herself into the crowd, drawing Needle. She landed on a man in a butcher’s apron, knocking him to the ground. Immediately someone slammed into her back and she almost went down herself. Bodies closed in around her, stumbling and pushing, trampling on the poor butcher. Arya slashed at them with Needle.

High atop the pulpit, Ser Ilyn Payne gestured and the knight in black-and-gold gave a command. The gold cloaks flung Lord Eddard to the marble, with his head and chest out over the edge.

“Here, you!” an angry voice shouted at Arya, but she bowled past, shoving people aside, squirming between them, slamming into anyone in her way. A hand fumbled at her leg and she hacked at it, kicked at shins. A woman stumbled and Arya ran up her back, cutting to both sides, but it was no good, no good, there were too many people, no sooner did she make a hole than it closed again. Someone buffeted her aside. She could still hear Sansa screaming.

Ser Ilyn drew a two-handed greatsword from the scabbard on his back. As he lifted the blade above his head, sunlight seemed to ripple and dance down the dark metal, glinting off an edge sharper than any razor. Ice, she thought, he has Ice! Her tears streamed down her face, blinding her.

And then a hand shot out of the press and closed round her arm like a wolf trap, so hard that Needle went flying from her hand. Arya was wrenched off her feet. She would have fallen if he hadn’t held her up, as easy as if she were a doll. A face pressed close to hers, long black hair and tangled beard and rotten teeth. “Don’t look!” a thick voice snarled at her.

“I . . . I . . . I . . . ” Arya sobbed.

The old man shook her so hard her teeth rattled. “Shut your mouth and close your eyes, boy.” Dimly, as if from far away, she heard a . . . a noise . . . a soft sighing sound, as if a million people had let out their breath at once. The old man’s fingers dug into her arm, stiff as iron. “Look at me. Yes, that’s the way of it, look at _ only me _.”

And so she did. 

Xxx

The next morning Ella was awoken by the sounds of a large direwolf pacing beside her cot. 

  
“Nope, it’s too early for this Greywind. Your master kept me up half the night rubbing my face raw with what he thinks is a grown mans beard... Which, it really isn’t.” 

Greywind was clearly not taking the hint because instead of leaving her in peace to sleep a bit longer she instead climbed up onto her cot and licked her from chin to temple. 

“NO, no, no, no, oh gross!” Pushing the wolf off her bed she shouted as loud as she could, “ROBB!” 

When no one came she sat up, suddenly feeling off balance. “Where is he Greywind?” 

The direwolf simply looked at her like she was incredibly slow and walked out of her tent into the early morning sun. Groaning Ella got up and followed her, struggling to remove the far too tight braid that was causing her head to ache. 

Outside in the camp men were already standing around the cook fires and the smell of sausage turned her already upset stomach. Spotting Robb’s squire she cornered him. “Where is Lord Stark?” 

The boy looked terrified of her, or perhaps terrified of Robb’s reaction to find him speaking with her. “He’s up on the ridge M’lady.” 

Ella followed the direction he pointed her in, ignoring the three guards trailing after her. 

She found Robb beneath a green canopy of leaves, surrounded by tall redwoods and great old elms, bent before the heart tree, a slender weir wood with a face more sad than fierce. His longsword was in his hand, and before she could prepare herself or her poor aching head he swung out and struck the blade against the tree. 

She halted, looking back at her guards in shock. Robb didn’t see her and struck the tree again and again, hacking at it like he wasn’t ruining his best sword. She felt a bit of her father take over and nearly lectured him on how expensive swords are. Instead she turned towards the guards, “Leave us.” 

They hesitated until Robb let out a horrible sound that had her shuffling forward without thinking. She didn’t even see them go, too focused on the young man in front of her. 

  
“Robb!” She knew not to get too close until he heard her, and when he turned to her fully she gasped. 

“He’s dead. They killed him.” 

“Dead? Who is dead?” She knew it though without having to ask. Something deep inside knew it before he even had to say it. 

“My father. Joffrey and the Queen… they killed him.” 

Ella’s knees shook and she nearly went down but fought past it, then struggled the rest of the way up the hill until she had him within arms reach. 

  
His weight brought them both down. 

“He’s dead. My father is dead.” 

“Shhh,” she soothed. Rocking him and running her fingers through his tangled curls. She’d never had to comfort anyone in this way and had no idea how to make this better. 

He cried in her arms, sometimes cursing her family, promising vengeance and blood and death. She bit her lip and took it, _ allowed _ it. 

_ Wouldn’t she do the same in his position? _

Selfishly she thought of Jaime and knew her actions now could very well be the only thing keeping her brother alive on this terrible day. Part of her feared that at any moment he would turn on her, punish the Lannister right in front of him. She probably would if she were in his shoes. Oh how she would hit and claw, curse and scream. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He clung to her and cried like a child would in a mothers arms. And she let him. She offered him every bit of strength she had in her until he could cry no more and finally find the strength to stand on his own two feet. 

They walked back to the camp hand in hand. Everyone bowed respectfully as they passed, some of the braver ones offering words of sympathy that Robb ignored. 

Once inside his tent he turns to her and promises with the vengeance she knows he deserves to feel, "I'm going to kill them all." 

She stands there stupidly wondering what he’s expecting her to say to that, and just as she goes to open her mouth he’s on her, squeezing her in a hug that is far too tight. Several minutes pass until he pulls away and reaches for a goblet of wine that someone must have made ready for him. She says nothing as he drinks, just watching him warily. 

"What can I do?" She finally asks, unable to take the silence any longer.

He looks at her with so much pain that she can hardly breathe. "Please, just make me forget." he says.

She nods along but not really understanding what he’s asking of her. It isn’t until he closes the distance between them that she gets it. 

The kiss is sloppy and far too rough but she allows it, willing to do anything to make him feel better. Their teeth clash and she accidentally bites his lip, laughing when he pulls back to growl at her. She nearly squeals when he reaches down and cups her bottom, lifting her up off of her feet. Her legs just naturally wrap around his waist, as if her body knows what her mind doesn’t yet know. 

He carries her to the bed where he lays her down and crawls over her, lips leaving a hot trail down her neck and to her cleavage. A sharp tearing sound makes her frown because **that’s her only dress**, but she allows it even though she knows she shouldn’t. 

Robb like the inexperienced boy he is attempts to pull her breasts out from the top of the dress having little luck. 

  
“Robb, that’s not how that works.” He pulls back and allows her to sit up. She reaches back behind herself yanking at the ties of her dress. He finally seems to catch on because now there’s suddenly a loud tearing as he literally rips the back of her dress apart. 

She curses in shock and a bit of pain but it turns into a moan when his tongue runs over her shoulder and neck, before sucking on her ear. She pants as she struggles with her dress before finally giving up on modesty and letting it fall to her waist, bearing her breasts to the cold air of tent. 

His mouth never stops it’s constant exploration. His hands work their way from her hips to her breasts, rubbing and teasing her nipples while she moans like a common harlet. 

She should _not_ be doing this. She’s engaged! She’s supposed to marry that… what’s his name? Gods she can’t think with him sucking on her neck and playing with her nipples this way. 

She should slap him very hard for this. 

  
And perhaps she will… later. 

His tongue finds its way into her ear, and suddenly she’s spinning around and climbing into his lap, kissing him with everything she has while grinding down on to his hardness to relieve the aching pain that is currently throbbing between her legs. 

Robb however realizes there’s a few obstacles in the way and yanks down her small clothes faster than she can count to three. 

She stares down at them stupidly while he shrugs out of his tunic and britches. 

The short distance starts to bring reason back to her, and she covers her breasts and starts to move away. “I, I don’t think-” 

Robb quickly shuts down whatever she’s trying to say by wrapping those luscious lips around one nipple. 

Her yelp is embarrassing loud as is his answering moan. 

This continues for a bit, him switching sides like a nursing babe. She isn’t sure when she wraps her legs around his hips, but the feeling of him poking her between her nether lips nearly has her shooting off the bed. 

“Robb-”, once again he silences her with his beautiful but wicked mouth. 

Morris.... no, Torris... Loras? No, that's not his name. Will?

Willas! She's marrying Will-

Somewhere along the line he decides she’s ready (which, okay yes, she’s dripping wet) but no where near ready when he suddenly breaches her. 

The pain is blinding and she has to bite into the flesh of his shoulder to get him to stop shoving forward. 

He whispers sweet words of love and kisses the tears on her cheeks while she struggles to catch her breath and fight past the pain. 

After a while it becomes a bit easier to take, but never does it actually feel good. _How could it feel good?_ It feels like he’s splitting her open down there. 

Thankfully it doesn’t last for very long and when he collapses on her she has to fight down the urge to start sobbing for her long dead mother because this cannot have really happened like this. 

She did not sleep with the man who is holding her hostage, the man who just promised to murder her entire family. 

But the horrible pain and stickiness between her thighs tells her she _ did_. 

His lips suddenly make their way to her neck as he places gentle kisses to her skin. 

“You’re mine Ella. No one will _ever_ take you from me now.” 

Her every instinct is to cringe away and perhaps scream “get off me!” but she doesn’t. 

He’s in pain and she wanted this… wanted _ him _ . She _ still _ wants _ him _. Even though she feels sore and raw she wants him inside her again. So she closes her eyes and allows him to press his lips to hers again, already wrapping her legs back around his waist to find him hard and ready for her. 

They do this several times over the course of the night until they are both exhausted and satisfied. He holds her to his chest as she sleeps and dreams of a world where there is no war, no Willas, no Tywin Lannister, and no dead Ned Stark. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

_"A fool too late bewares when all the peril is past."_

_-Elizabeth I_

“They’ve killed Eddard Stark.” Tyrion reads and the re-reads the missive before dropping it onto the table. 

“They did, my lord.” The messenger’s voice is dulled by exhaustion. On the breast of his torn surcoat, the brindled boar of Crakehall is half-obscured by dried blood that makes Tyrion question just what it took to get this message to him. He had been upstairs, enjoying the comfort of a featherbed and the warmth of Shae’s body beside him, when his squire had woken him to say that a rider had arrived with dire news of Kingslanding. 

So it had all been for nothing. The rush south, the endless forced marches, the bodies left beside the road . . . all for naught. His idiot nephew had killed the one man who could secure both Ella and Jaime’s release. 

He’d been on the road for days to reach Kingslanding and now only a short distance to go and _ this _ happens. 

There will be no peace now that Joffrey has decided to ornament the Red Keep with Lord Eddard’s head. None whatsoever. Nothing his father can promise will come close to the rage that Robb Stark likely feels... His thoughts turn even darker when he realizes what this could mean for Ella. Jaime is still a valuable hostage being a first son, but Ella is only a second daughter nearly married off already. What type of treatment will she receive now from a boy so close to her in age and in so much pain?

She’s the most beautiful girl in the kingdom. Robb Stark won’t be able to overlook that, and he’s had experience with how Robb Stark treats Lannister's when he had the misfortune to bring Bran the designs for the new horse saddle. Robb Stark showed his distaste quite easily and they hadn’t even been at war yet. 

Would the honorable Ned Stark’s eldest son be capable of hurting an innocent girl?

Surely not. 

For his sake he hopes not because if he touches one hair on that precious girl’s golden head then both he and the much more fearful Tywin Lannister will make him wish he’d been able to join poor Ned in his swift execution. 

“Perhaps now they would consent to a truce, and allow us to trade our prisoners for theirs,” offers the messenger.

“Sure, and let’s hope Lord Eddard’s rotting head isn’t already up on the walls of Kingslanding,” Tyrion spits back acidly. 

“What about a ransom? Surely Lord Tywin can make an offer-”

“If the Starks feel the need for gold, they can melt down Jaime’s armor. Ella doesn't particularly care much for jewelry but that armor would feed an army for half a year.” Tyrion takes a long swig of his wine. “Why are you still here?”

Xxx

Ella’s eyes are wide as she takes in the large war tent set up where her tent used to be next to Robb’s. "Son of a bitch!" 

She’s unsure which shocks her more, the fact that he’s no longer bothering to hide that she’s sleeping in his bed or that he was able to get all of this done without her noticing. _What is he thinking?_ Is it her? Is this _her_ fault? Cersei once told her sex makes men stupid. And clearly after seeing this, it _really_ does. He must know that every man and woman in this camp is going to assume she is now Robb Stark’s whore, and by nightfall word will spread until everyone in the Seven Kingdoms knows as well.

Tears fill her eyes as she imagines the shame her father will feel, and the humiliation coming to Willas. As if he doesn’t have enough of that already!

She wishes she could warn him somehow. Write a letter to deny it so that maybe she has somewhere still to go when all this ends. Let Robb have just a smidgen of the hurt she's feeling right now. She could be back with Willas in Highgarden while Robb is stuck with some plain faced Northerner or even better a fat _Frey_ girl-! That would be just what he deserves!

She’s so lost in her spiteful thoughts she doesn’t hear the rather loud footsteps behind her.

“So you’re the prize my nephew would risk everything for. _Now_, I'm beginning to understand what Catelyn meant...” Ella’s yelp is covered by Greywind’s menacing growl, who moves to stand between her and the stranger.

The man who looked cocky two seconds ago now looks like he’s about to wet himself. He holds up his hands and squeaks, “I’m Edmure Tully, Robb’s uncle. I’m here to bring a message from my father, Lord Hoster Tully. He’s been ill and wishes to speak to his grandson.”

Ella reaches down to pet Greywind, hoping to calm him. “I’m sorry to hear that. Robb’s in his tent. I’ll go and get him.” Edmure nods, backing himself into the furthest corner of the tent while she and Greywind pass him.

She finds Robb standing over his desk, bent over a map of the Westerlands. Her stomach drops. He seems to sense her presence and says without looking up, “I must call a council. There are things that to be decided soon.”

She makes herself comfortable on his bed. _Things_. He says the word like it's not her homelands that he’s been plotting over. “Your uncle is outside. He says your grandfather would like to see you, he’s not doing well.”

Robb sighs. “I know, but I’ve called a council and we must decide where to go next.”

She reaches to the table beside her and pours herself a cup of wine, taking a large gulp before starting their next battle. “You’ve taken away my tent.”

Robb finally looks up. “I need that space for my war council.”

Indignation flares within her. “You had a tent for that already! You know what people will think if they see the tent I’m supposed to be sleeping in is now gone!”

“I don’t care what people will think.”

“You SHOULD!” She explodes. “Have you lost your senses? You can’t flaunt that you are bedding me to everyone in Westeros! My father will see that as the worst insult, and what about the Tyrells? Do you think Willas will appreciate that?”

“I don’t care what Willas thinks! I’ll kill him with my bare hands! You aren’t his anymore!”

She cruelly laughs at him, not caring that his face is turning an alarming shade of red. “Oh I’m his all right. I’ll tell him how you’ve treated me, how you hurt me and frightened me, and put me in a cage to get attacked by your own men. He’ll forgive me. He’s a better man than you’ll ever be!”

She has zero time to regret those words because he comes after her like a man about to commit murder. She attempts to flee over the bed but he snatches her by the ankle and drags her back under him kicking and screaming. He pins her down on her back and gets right in her face.

“You’re mine. You were mine the moment you spread your pretty white thighs for me.” His hardness pressing against her belly as he says this. “Say it. Say your mine.”

She hisses like an angry cat and struggles under his weight. “No.”

“Say it.” 

“NO!”

"Kiss me," he orders, but she just shakes her head and dodges his attempt to meet her lips. 

Robb pulls back a few inches to try and catch her eyes. She refuses him that too and turns her head to the side. “Look at me Ella.”

“No.”

Warm lips press against her cheek, “look at me.” He says it in such a way she can’t help but obey, his words strong yet desperate. When their eyes finally meet he traps her in his gaze, blue eyes filled with some emotion too strong for her to understand. “You’re mine, and I’m yours.”

His hands no longer restrain her, too busy unlacing his breeches and removing her dress and small clothes. She watches in a daze, wondering why she's not fighting this. 

“You’re mine and I’m yours,” he repeats, as he guides his weeping cock to her entrance.

The rough slide of him inside her causes her to whimper and then keen, body arching to find a more comfortable angle. His next push makes her gasp, legs spreading further, making him go even deeper. “Gods Ella, your cunt is so tight, so hot. It’s like it was made for me.”

His filthy words make her even more wet, the sound of their bodies meeting positively obscene in the small tent. She struggles with yanking up his tunic until she can reach the skin of his back where she digs her nails in to punish him, marking him with moon shaped crescents that make him hiss through his teeth.

“My lioness marking her wolf?” He teases in her ear, causing her to dig in even harder.

“You’re an arrogant ass.”

His hips pick up speed, “Say you’re mine,” he grunts, “and that I’m yours.”

She won’t do it. Can’t do it. This arrogant boy won’t ever let her go if she admits it.

“No.”

His snarl is animalistic, and she knows everyone within a mile must hear what they are doing.

"Your cunt loves this cock, you wait all day for me to come and fuck you and fill you full of my cum."

Her clawing his back bloody is her only response. It’s shameful and demeaning, but gods is it sexy when he says those things to her. Her orgasm nearly hits her just as he cruelly withdrawals, yanking her up onto her hands and knees only to enter her again, this time more brutal. He then pounds into her from behind like a wolf would his mate, only he doesn’t seem to care if she’s enjoying it. This is her punishment for denying his claim over her. She takes it like a bitch in heat, moaning as he finally growls and empties himself into her.

She falls limply onto her stomach and winces when he pulls out, not enjoying the feeling of the sticky mess he’s left behind. She feels a kiss pressed against her shoulder before he gets up and dresses. He leaves her like that without a word of goodbye. 

She lays there cursing herself, she knows it’s foolish to make him angry like that but she just can’t help herself. She’s tired of being stuck there all the time, a prisoner in a tiny tent with no one besides him to talk to. She misses her ladies, her father, her brothers, and yes even _Cersei _and perhaps on her most desperate days even _Joffrey_. 

At least if she were in Highgarden she’d have Margaery and her hilarious grandmother for company. Here she has no one but resentful guards, a scary direwolf and her enemy who seems to be getting more and more possessive with every day that passes. She needs to be free. She needs Jaime to be free. More importantly she needs them both to be _safe_. 

She lays there in that mess for what seems like hours, until shouting suddenly breaks through her pity party for one. Somehow she’d allowed hours to pass because it’s now so dark thar she's unable to find her small clothes and shoes. Giving up on both she tip toes barefoot outside the tent to hide in the darkness that separates the two tents. 

Robb’s voice interrupts an argument and Ella nearly shrieks when a wet nose suddenly bumps into her arm.

"Bad Greywind!" Of course the beast just looks at her like she's the fool for sneaking around barefoot in the dark. With a sigh she decides she no longer cares if she's caught and edges closer to the tent and peeks inside and see's four long trestle tables arranged in a broken square with Robb sitting front and center. A man she doesn’t know is glowering and blustering about fugitives burning and pillaging in their lands.

Robb patiently listens until the next lord speaks up, cursing and banging his fist on the table. Lord Karstark, who looks gaunt and hollow-eyed in his grief, sits beside him like a man in a nightmare, his long beard uncombed and unwashed. This man and his very clear pain actually frightens her, because more than once he’s looked at her like he’d give anything to have two minutes alone with her to take out his revenge for his two dead sons.

The arguing rages on for hours, while she listens from her new spot just outside the tent in the grass with Greywind’s head in her lap. His warmth is her only comfort after hearing the numerous men plotting war and the death of her entire family.

Many of the lords want to march on Harrenhal at once, to meet her father and end Lannister power for all time. A young, hot-tempered lord urges a strike west at Casterly Rock instead. One man that Robb refers to as Mallister counsels patience, pointing out that Riverrun could thwart the Lannister supply lines; just let them bide their time, denying her father fresh levies and provisions while they strengthen their defenses and rest their weary troops.

The other lords will have none of it. One shouts they should finish the work they began in the Whispering Wood. March to Harrenhal and bring Roose Bolton’s army down as well.

That gives her pause, since could have sworn she saw Roose Bolton slithering around whispering in Robb’s ear just a couple days ago. She remembered how creepy his stare was when he caught her hiding in Robb’s tent. Another lord rose to insist they pledge their fealty to King Renly, and move south to join their might to his.

“Renly is not the king,” Robb barks back, clearly unhappy with joining Renly or more importantly Loras. 

“You cannot mean to hold to Joffrey, my lord,” Galbart Glover urges. “He put your father to death.”

The reminder irritates her and Robb’s voice grows even more steady. “That makes him evil, and I do not know that it makes Renly king. Joffrey is still Robert’s eldest trueborn son, so the throne is rightfully his by all the laws of the realm. Were he to die, and I mean to see that he does, he has a younger brother. Tommen is next in line after Joffrey.” 

“Tommen is no less a Lannister,” Glover snaps back. 

“As you say,” Robb agrees. “Yet if neither one is king, still, how could it be Lord Renly? He’s Robert’s younger brother. Bran can’t be Lord of Winterfell before me, and Renly can’t be king before Lord Stannis.”

Lady Mormont agrees. “Lord Stannis has the better claim.”

“Renly is crowned,” yells another man. “Highgarden and Storm’s End support his claim, and the Dornishmen will not be laggardly. If Winterfell and Riverrun add their strength to his, he will have five of the seven great houses behind him. Six, if the Arryns bestir themselves! Six against the Rock! My lords, within the year, we will have all their heads on pikes, the queen and the boy king, Lord Tywin, the Imp, the Kingslayer, Ser Kevan, all of them! That is what we shall win if we join with King Renly. What does Lord Stannis have against that, that we should cast it all aside?”

“The right,” says Robb stubbornly.

“So you mean us to declare for Stannis?” She thinks that might be his uncle.

“I don’t know,” says Robb. “I prayed to know what to do, but the gods did not answer. The Lannisters killed my father for a traitor, and we know that was a lie, but if Stannis is the lawful king and we fight against him with Renly, we will be traitors. My father, the greatest man I ever knew supported Stannis and his claim. Why would we not follow his lead and help put Stannis on the throne?” 

Ella starts to squirm, not at all liking where this is heading. Thankfully another man interrupts the many voices that are agreeing with him. 

“My lord father would urge caution. Wait, and let these two kings play their game of thrones. When they are done fighting, we can bend our knees to the victor, or oppose him, as we choose. With Renly arming, likely Lord Tywin would welcome a truce . . . and the safe return of his son. Willas Tyrell is already offering quite the reward for the return of his betrothed. Noble lords, allow me to go to him at Harrenhal and arrange good terms, and meet with the Tyrell heir and gather our ransom . . . I’ll return the girl-”

The sound of a fist crashing down on the table makes both Greywind and Ella jump. The wolf gets to his feet and she watches with wide eyes as he heads towards his master, growling with every step he takes. Robb's voice is even more frightening. “No one, and I mean NO ONE will be taking her anywhere. We are not accepting a ransom for her and I’ll hear no more of it!”

Everyone sits eerily quiet until a loud bark of laughter breaks the tension. The easily recognizable voice of Greatjon Umber shouts, “I told you boy, I told you that the young wolf was bedding her!”

Ella nearly weeps in shame and hides her face in her hands while everyone in the tent hoots with laughter, teasing Robb for breaking in the Lannister girl and how Tywin Lannister will really be shitting gold once he hears.

It takes Robb several minutes to calm them all down, and it isn’t until Rickard Karstark yells “Ransoms be damned, we must not give up the Kingslayer,” that everyone finally hushes.

“Why not a peace?” A new much sterner voice asks, the absolute last one that she wants to hear right now.

"A peace Lady Stark?"

Her shock at learning Catelyn has returned is put aside with Robb’s next words. “My lady, they murdered my father, your husband.” 

He halts, and somehow she knew this would happen. Her eyes close in defeat at the sound of him unsheathing his longsword and laying it on the table. “This is the only peace I have for Tywin Lannister.”

Greatjon Umber bellows his approval, and other men and women add their voices, shouting and drawing swords and pounding their fists on the table as Ella sits despairing.

There would be no peace, no chance that Robb would willingly give her back. War is the only path he’s choosing and there is nothing she can do to stop it. She’s completely helpless and for a wild moment she considers running, going back to his tent and finding her shoes and running as soon as they are on her feet.

She’d have no chance at freeing Jaime, already knowing how well guarded he is. Right now her own guards are likely standing by watching from somewhere in the darkness that she can’t see. Robb isn’t stupid, he wouldn’t leave her to her own devices like this. 

“MY LORDS!” Greatjon booms. “Here is what I say to these two kings!” He spits. “Renly Baratheon is nothing to me, nor Stannis neither. Why should they rule over me and mine, from some flowery seat in Highgarden or Dorne? What do they know of the Wall or the wolfswood or the barrows of the First Men? Even their gods are wrong. The Others take the Lannisters too, I’ve had a bellyful of them.” He reaches back and draws his immense two-handed greatsword. “Why shouldn’t we rule ourselves again? It was the dragons we married, and the dragons are all dead! There sits the only king I mean to bow my knee to. The King in the North!”

“I’ll have peace on those terms,” Lord Karstark agrees. “They can keep their red castle and their iron chair as well.” The sound of another longsword being pulled from its scabbard. “The King in the North!”

A woman declares “The King of Winter!”

“The King in the North!”

“The King in the North!”

“THE KING IN THE NORTH!”

Well, _shit._ Ella forces herself to stand on shaky legs and goes back into his tent as the shouts drown out everything else. “THE KING IN THE NORTH!”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I'll be honest, its always nice to see people praising the story, but it's far worse to see people complain. So I never beg for comments, and I won't start. 
> 
> I do want it to be understood that this version of Robb is not a pleasant or good, or even heroic one. He's not going to do anything in this story that will make you see him in a good light, and that probably won't change. Further into this story there will be a more magical reason behind his behavior explained, BUT that won't suddenly make him a better guy. So please don't read this and think you'll be getting Robb from the books or show. There's something about Ella that will simply make rational behavior impossible, especially when it comes to her influence on men. So please guys, don't expect a normal healthy relationship here.

** Chapter 8 **

“Good and bad, don’t get distracted by that. It will just confuse you. Good men do bad things. And bad men do things believing it’s for the good of all mankind.” _— Anderson Dawes, The Expanse_

They arrive at Riverrun in the evening just as the setting sun is making the towers black against the pink sky. There is a fanfare from the walls of the castle as they approach and the guard spills out of the guardhouse to line the path to the drawbridge. Robb rides side by side with the girl acknowledging the cheers of the soldiers and the applause of the people while Catelyn attempts to hide her anger at having to ride directly behind them. 

She thinks, not for the first time that she must learn to bite her tongue and bide her time until the moment comes when the girl is sent back to where she belongs. She must work to diminish the effect the girl has on her. If she could just teach herself to care nothing about her, one way or another, then she would not always be looking to see if Robb is watching her, or worse, if she is watching him back. 

It feels like hours later when her things are moved into her father's bedchamber, where Lord Hoster sleeps fitfully. She went out to the balcony and stood with one hand on the rough stone balustrade. Beyond the point of the castle the swift Tumblestone joined the placid Red Fork, and she could see a long way downriver. If a striped sail comes from the east, it will be Ser Robin returning with more bad news. For the moment the surface of the waters were empty. She thanked the gods for that, and went back inside to sit with her father.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Catelyn spends the next morning beside her father's sick bed, then only leaves his side to write to Bran and Rickon and help oversee the welcome feast. 

  
By evening she’s exhausted on her feet, standing in the great hall waiting for her son, _ the King _ to grace them all with his presence. She’s nearly ready to go drag him in by his ear when the doors finally open and everyone turns to watch as they both come in. 

  
Robb enters with the girl on his arm, more beautiful than any woman she’s ever seen. She has the easy grace of the Kingslayer, smiling around the room as if she thinks she is greeting friends rather than enemies. She even has his height, tall with long slender legs hidden behind a simple grey dress. Her golden hair hangs down her back in a tumble of honey and silver curls.

Robb beams down at her as if she were the answer to every prayer he’d ever had. As they approach she knows she must greet them for he is now a King and she… is-_ what _ ? His _ whore _? His bedmate/captive? 

She wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Unfortunately, the look on Robb’s face says she better greet her accordingly. 

“Mother.” Robb bends to kiss her hand, then slightly nods towards the girl. 

“Your Grace,” Catelyn bows to him, then turns towards the girl and adds in a far colder voice, “Lady Ella.” 

Ella for her part looks to be about as miserable in this moment as she is but finds the grace to bow to her. "Lady Stark, I’d like to thank you for your hospitality. I was told that you yourself picked out my dress.” 

The grey dress was the drabbest, plainest thing Catelyn could find on such short notice, and the girl clearly wasn’t happy with the color choice. 

“Grey looks lovely on you” Robb quickly assures her, as if bold-faced impertinence needs reassurance. He turns to his mother: “I’m glad we have the opportunity to visit your childhood home, and Ella needs the comfort of these castle walls after living in tents for so long. I’m sure you will be glad to help assist her with anything she may need,” he says, a tone in his voice that reminds her that she must agree.

“I'd be delighted,” she says back coolly. “I'd be so _delighted _.”

Robb smiles a real genuine smile and bends to kiss his mothers hand again. He leads the girl away as she watches them in bitter resentment. A shadow moves to take their spot. 

“The girl is exquisite, like a statue of a goddess. Far more beautiful than her sister ever was. She will make a beautiful Queen for your son. She is a perfect piece of work. If you were to draw up the qualities of a Queen she would match the pattern." Catelyn snorts but Edmure ignores it and continues. "I hear she is well read – her imp brother saw to that. They even say the old lion educated her so well that she speaks three languages, plays musical instruments, can sing beautifully-”

Catelyn can’t help but interrupt snidely, “-Oh yes, and she can sew just as fine a shirt as I’ve ever seen, the hems show a confidence that would make Tywin Lannister extremely proud.” 

“She can sew?” Edmure asks, a bit shocked. 

“Of course she can sew. But honestly not very good.” 

“Well they make quite the handsome couple. If given the opportunity, and some space to shine she could even bloom like a rose if he allowed it.” 

Catelyn can taste only jealousy in her mouth like the bile that rushes under her tongue before she’s suddenly sick. “My son doesn’t need her beside him to be handsome. He’s got looks all on his own, he does not need that girl to accomplish it for him. Besides, I would not have her under my roof for all the gold in the Kingdom.” 

  
Edmure smiles at her viciously, “Winterfell is no longer yours to command. It belongs to Robb, and he clearly adores her. You cannot think you have a chance of separating them.” 

Catelyn watches as her son gently tucks a stray golden curl behind the girls ear. “I don’t have to,” she corrects through her teeth, “Her father would never allow it. She’s already betrothed to Willas Tyrell.” 

Edmure laughs as if he had forgotten. “Oh yes, Tywin Lannister surely won’t see a good match in marrying his youngest to one of the oldest families in the Kingdom. The boy who is beating him in every battle. No, he’d much rather her marry a cripple with absolutely no power or military strength.” 

“You think Tywin would want this match?” Catelyn is so shocked she has to grip on to his arm to keep from tripping over her own two feet. The idea is ludicrous. 

“Of course he would. He wants to sue for peace, he doesn’t want to keep fighting if it can be avoided. What better way to end a war than in marriage? He would probably even force Queen Cersei to give up the idea of keeping the North if it allows him the chance of his grandchildren ruling over both the North and the South.” 

For once Catelyn looks at her brother and sees someone who may actually be paying attention to the politics around him, someone who isn’t the fool of their family. Perhaps she, who didn’t see this obvious strategy is the fool. “I don’t want this for him. He deserves better than a Lannister. I’ve spent enough time around the girl to know that even though she may smile and appear to be happy that she really isn’t. That-” she nods towards the girl who currently smiles as if she hasn’t a care in the world, “-isn’t love. She doesn’t feel for him the way he feels for her. She may warm his bed but she wants to be free. If given the chance she’d happily leave him behind like a bad nightmare and go back to that Tyrell boy.” 

Edmure nods and studies the girl. “I think you’re right. She looks more like a terrified hostage than a young girl in love.” 

Catelyn watches her more closely, sees the way she shies away from her son's touch, the way she attempts to put more space between them, and knows, that terrified is probably a pretty accurate way to describe this Lannister girl. 

* * *

Catelyn could not say if Lord Hoster knew that she was there, or if her presence brought him any comfort, but it gave her solace to be with him away from Robb and his newest obsession. _Or is it madness?_ Has this Lannister girl driven her once perfectly reasonable son mad, or is the fault her own for pushing him to pick up his father's mantle before he was ready for it?

_Could this be her fault?_

“Father, I don’t know what I’ve done…”

Lord Hoster's eyes open. "Tansy," he husked in a voice thick with pain.

He does not know her. Catelyn had grown accustomed to him taking her for her mother or her sister Lysa, but Tansy was a name strange to her. "It's Catelyn," she says. "It's Cat, Father."

"Forgive me . . . the blood . . . oh, please . . . Tansy . . . "

Could there have been another woman in her father's life? Some village maiden he had wronged when he was young, perhaps? Could he have found comfort in some serving wench's arms after her Mother died? It was a queer thought, rather unsettling really. Suddenly she felt as though she had not known her father at all. "Who is Tansy, my lord? Do you want me to send for her, Father? Where would I find the woman? Does she still live?"

Lord Hoster groans. "Dead." His hand groped for hers. "You'll have others . . . Sweet babes, and trueborn."

Others? Catelyn thought. Has he forgotten that Ned is gone? Is he still talking to Tansy, or is it Lysa, or her Mother?

When he coughs, the sputum comes up bloody. He clutches at her fingers. ". . Be a good wife and the gods will bless you . . . sons . . . trueborn sons . . . aaahhh." The sudden spasm of pain makes his hand tighten. His nails dig into her hand, and he gives a muffled scream.

"Father!" 

Robb is suddenly there with Maester Vyman on his heels to mix another dose of milk of the poppy and helps the old man swallow it down.

"Can I help?" Catelyn sneers at the site of her standing awkwardly in the open door way. 

“I’ll have no Lannister in these rooms!” 

Robb looks torn between defending the recoiling girl and obeying his obviously upset mother. The girl swiftly apologizes and makes her escape. Robb waits for his grandfather to fall back asleep and the Maester to leave before speaking his mind. “I know you’re in pain right now but I will not allow you to treat her that way.” 

  
Catelyn could care less what he thinks he will allow in her father's castle. Instead she turns on him. “Why is _she_ here? Why are you allowing her to roam freely in this castle. Is she no longer your prisoner? What if she escapes?” 

His blue eyes harden. “She won’t and she has her guards, they were out in the hall." The he adds, as if he needs to. "For her protection!" 

Her bitter laughter echoes around the chamber that smells of death and blood. “She’s a Lannister. You cannot trust her!” 

He hesitates, then finally says, “She’s carrying my child.” 

Anger isn’t even a good enough word to describe what she’s feeling. Loathing, brutal, hatred is more accurate. “She’s told you this?” 

Robb shakes his head. “No. But mother, I know it. I’ve shared her bed for weeks upon weeks and she has not bled. I’ve had dreams, so many dreams and I’ve seen it. She’s carrying my child.” 

“But she hasn’t actually said it? She hasn't claimed this to you?” 

“No. I fear what her reaction will be so I say nothing. Every morning I wake hoping it will be the day that she confirms it but she is silent and I now I don’t know if she’s ignorant of it or if she’s attempting to hide it from me.” 

Her son looks like he’s aged ten years and Catelyn has no idea what to do in this situation. “Stress could cause her to stop bleeding, this doesn’t mean she’s carrying your child.” 

“She is mother.” Robb struggles to explain what it is he means and finally blurts, “Greywind knows it too. He’s been so protective of her and I can feel it through him, even in my dreams. It’s like he can sense, or maybe smell the change. I know this doesn’t sound logical, but please just trust me when I say that I know she’s carrying my child.” 

“Well if you truly believe it then I’ll trust that… but this means we need to get her to drink moontea-”

“NO!” His rage is swift and hot. “Absolutely not! That is my child mother and I don’t care what you think is best because it doesn’t matter in the slightest! She’s mine and that’s my child and no one will harm either of them!” 

Catelyn feels like screaming and wailing like a temperamental child but she knows in this moment it will do no good. Instead she nods as if her son isn't talking complete nonsense and says, “What about her father? What do you think Tywin Lannister will do after hearing you’ve put a bastard in his youngest?” 

Robb smiles. “I’ll take her as my wife and kill Tywin, the Queen, the King and every other Lannister that remains. I won’t use Ella to make a deal, and I won’t allow Tywin to use her and my child as a bargaining chip to send us back North.”

“What about your sisters? Have you forgotten about them?” 

Robb finally looks a bit more guilty, as he should. “We haven’t heard one word about Arya and I don’t think she’s in Kingslanding anymore. As for Sansa, I think we need to face the reality of the situation and see that there’s nothing we can do other than attacking the city and freeing her by force.” 

Catelyn’s hands begin to shake as she struggles with not slapping her once favorite child across his handsome face. “Cersei will kill her before we even make it to the gates! Gods can only know how they are treating her after gossip spreads of the insults you’ve paid them already by bedding the girl!” 

“I regret that mother, and I hope that isn’t the case. But honestly, do you think the Queen or her mad son will offer us a fair trade? My bannermen didn’t come here to rescue a pair of girls. They don’t care about Sansa or Arya. They only care about the North remaining independent and the spoils of war. They’d hang me by my feet if I even attempted it!"

“Your lords made you their king.”

“And can unmake me just as easy.”

“If your crown is the price we must pay to have Arya and Sansa returned safe, we should pay it willingly. Half your lords would like to murder Lannister in his cell. If he should die while he’s your prisoner, men will say—” 

“—that he well deserved it,” Robb finishes.

“And your sisters?” Catelyn asked sharply. “Will they deserve their deaths as well? I promise you, if any harm comes to her brother, Cersei will pay us back blood for blood—”

“The Kingslayer won’t die yet, not until I’ve won this war at least. No one so much as speaks to him without my warrant. He has food, water, clean straw, more comfort than he has any right to. But I won’t free him, not even for Arya and Sansa.” 

Catelyn realizes this he will not budge on and tries something else. 

“What do you think your lords will do when you marry their enemy?” 

“She isn’t their enemy. She’s charmed them all, you’re the only one who still sees her as such. They may not like it, they may even wish I’d marry one of their daughters, but they know who I marry isn’t going to change anything. I’ll continue to fight the Lannister’s if I marry her or not. Joffrey won’t give up the North, and I won’t give up Ella. There’s only one solution here, and it's me marching my army South and killing all of them.” 

“Be honest Robb, are you doing all of this so you can keep her? A girl who doesn’t want to be here, who wants to go home and marry another?” 

Robb makes no answer, but there is hurt in his eyes. Blue eyes, Tully eyes, eyes she had given him. She's wounded him, but he's too much his father’s son to admit it. That is unworthy of her, she tells herself. Gods be good, what is to become of them? He is doing his best, trying so hard, she knows it, can see it, and yet . . . she’s lost Ned, the rock her life was built on, and she can not bear to lose the girls as well . . .

“I’m sorry I said that. I know you’re trying your best.” 

Robb rubs his forehead tiredly. “I love her, but even if she didn’t exist I’d still be choosing the same. Tywin would trade the girls for his son, _ everyone knows that _. I could keep Ella and get the girls back just by giving back Jamie Lannister, but that isn’t a possibility for me. My men did not march all this way for two girls. Perhaps they would have agreed on the trade for my father, but they will not do the same for the girls. Mother, I swear to you I’ll do all I can for my sisters, and if the queen has any sense, she’ll accept my terms once I’ve defeated her father.” 

“And if she doesn’t? What if you win your war, and make it to Kingslanding and offer her the freedom to continue to sit on the throne if she gives up her own son and the freedom of the North. What if she still doesn’t accept?” 

Robb’s voice doesn’t waiver. “If not, I’ll make her rue the day she refused me.”

And with those words Catelyn _ finally _ understands.

* * *

> Hours later she finds herself sitting in the guest chambers staring coldly at the girl responsible for it all. 

“You want to help _ me _?” Ella’s shock would be funny if their situation weren’t so dire.

“No you foolish, insipid girl, I’m _ not _helping you. I’m doing this because I have no other options. Robb has made his choice and now I’m making mine. I need someone to rescue my girls and I can’t depend on my son to do that anymore. I need you to get the Kingslayer to agree to freeing my girls if I free him.” 

Tears of frustration fill the younger woman's eyes. “I don’t think he’d leave without me.” She shakes her head. “No, I _ know _ he won’t.” 

“He will if he wants to live. _You_ will convince him if you want him to live.” 

Ella tries to compose herself. “You think Robb will kill him? Even after all I'm doing to make him happy, he will still kill my brother?" 

“Robb has told me he has no plans to make a trade. He will not be giving you back under any circumstance. He plans on freeing the North, and to do that he is going to continue this war until he wins it. What do you think will happen to your brother when he does?” 

Ella moans, “He’ll kill him. He told me he would the night his father died but I didn’t want to believe it.” 

“So then you understand what his plans mean for my girls.” 

“My sister the Queen won’t risk Jamie’s life.” The fact that she makes no mention of Cersei being unwilling to risk her life makes Catelyn laugh. 

“The fool King beheaded my husband, so what the Queen wants clearly doesn’t matter.” 

Ella takes a step forward, “I’ll admit Joffrey can be cruel, but I don’t think he’d kill your girls-”

“He will, and so would she. If Robb manages to beat your father and make it to her front gates, the Queen will have them both killed in front of him. I can’t risk that.” 

Ella considers this. “How do you plan on freeing Jamie under Robb’s nose? He has me followed night and day.” 

Now Catelyn really does smile. “This is my girlhood home. I think I know it better than my boy does." 

* * *

As if the fates has chosen their side, Willas Tyrell approaches the gates in front of the moat on River Road with a guard of thirty men. His goal is singular and Robb is thoroughly distracted. It isn't long before word reaches Catelyn, allowing her the opportunity to sneak Ella through a hidden passage and into the dungeons without notice, and by morning Jamie Lannister (quite unwillingly) finds himself floating down river towards freedom and away from his sister who is left to pay the price. 

* * *

End Notes: So, a bit of a twist. We're on my own messed up timeline and Brienne won't be meeting Jamie the way she did in the books/show, and no he won't be losing his hand. I need our Kingslayer in fighting form because there WILL be a White Wolf vs Kingslayer showdown to look forward to, and I don't think a handless Jamie would be fair up against Jon. 

**TEASER FOR NEXT CHAPTER.... WILLAS HAS ARRIVED!!!!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

“Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting--or even demanding--their own enslavement.” ― Larken Rose

Two hours. It takes two hours for Robb to learn of Jaime’s escape, and immediately return to her. He only gets half the question out of his mouth before abandoning it all together and ripping her out of her bed.

“Wha-”

“Did you know? Who helped you? Was it Willas? Did you plan this with him?”

Ella’s fear causes her to tremble so hard her teeth begins to chatter. Catelyn told her to play dumb as long as possible to allow Jaime the time to get further away. She’s not supposed to know about the escape or Willas turning up. She’s supposed to pretend to be sleeping and act completely unaware, all of this she knows, yet her traitor body doesn't and won’t stop shaking. “I don’t know what-”

“STOP LYING TO ME!” Robb roars, spittle flying in her face.

What can she do? How can she help Jaime? The shaking worsens, and suddenly she feels violently ill. Without another word she bends and throws up on the rug beneath their feet.

Robb’s there beside her, holding her hair back and patting her shoulders. She’s crying and gagging and gods when did the room get so hot? Robb’s murmuring to her and since he’s no longer yelling she allows him to comfort her because this is what Catelyn said right? Delay him. She may not have meant in this exact way, but it’s effect is still the same.

Her body heaves until she can’t heave anymore, her face is covered in sweat and she cries into his shoulder when she realizes she’s got vomit in her hair. “Shhh.”

The Maester is pulled away from Lord Hoster’s side and brought into her room. He helps Robb strip and clean her. It's humiliating, but soon she’s back in bed sobbing onto her pillow. She asks for Catelyn which causes Robb to freeze in his braiding of her hair and it’s then when Ella realizes her mistake.

It takes only seconds for the yelling to begin again, but this time thankfully it’s not at her. She can hear it further down the hall, and it’s Robb yelling at his horrible mother.

Ella’s crying has stopped when Robb finally reappears, hard faced and no longer sympathetic.

“You and my mother went behind my back to free the Kingslayer.” It’s not a question and Ella suddenly wonders how Robb got to be so good at reading his enemies. _And her. _ Reading her. 

“You would have murdered him in his cell.”

Robb doesn’t deny it. Only moves to the window with his back to her. “We will be married today.”

Ella gapes at his back until the anger finally comes. When it does she feel's powerful with it. “No. I won’t be marrying you today or any other day.” She’s up on he knees struggling to unwrap the furs from trapping her in the bed. 

He turns and watches her struggle. “You will. You’re carrying my child.”

He comes back to the bed and helps get her legs untangled. “I’m not!”

“You haven’t bled. You’re carrying my child Ella. We’ve made love hundreds of times now with me always spilling in you.”

Fury rushes through her and she tries to focus it into the proper direction, but somehow she’s lost the battle and decided to cry again instead. “You did this on purpose! You wanted this!” She won’t deny her breasts are sore and no she hasn’t bleed in several moons now and maybe, _maybe_ she has been sick more than not lately.

“I did.” His honesty is somehow worse than him lying because he sounds completely unapologetic when he says it. “I’ve never hidden my feelings from you Ella, I’ve told you that you’re mine and I’m yours. Of course I want this.”

Her sobs are near hysterical. “But I don’t! I don’t want this. I want to go home! I want my father!”

Robb laughs at her. Actually laughs. He comes and tries to put his arms around her but she won’t have that and instead slaps him right across his face. “Don’t touch me!” She slaps him again. “Don’t ever touch me again! You’ve stolen my life from me, my future!” She tries to slap him a third time but he stops her, easily using his weight against her and pinning her to the bed. 

“Stop it!” She continues to struggle until she’s tired out and finally relents. He waits until the life drains from her body before speaking again. Several minutes pass before he murmurs, “I love you.”

And gods help her she thinks she may love him back. How would she know though? _Really?_ Instead she bites her tongue until she tastes blood because she won’t say it back. He doesn’t deserve hearing those words after stealing her life from her this way.

“I’m having your child.” Her words holds absolutely no joy. 

“Yes, you are.”

* * *

Robb sleeps like a child while she slips from the bed to go towards the window.

Sunlight shimmers on the rivers, gilding the surface of the waters as they roll past the castle. Ella shades her eyes against the glare, searching in the distance for sign of her betrothed. 

What she sees instead makes her recoil.

Bodies hanging from the walls. Two of them. From this distance she can’t see their faces, but it's enough to put the fear in her. Past the walls off to the right she see’s horses and men, then finally the green silk banners flapping in the wind.

Willas.

He hadn’t been given entry into the castle, instead forced to linger with his men not a hundred yards from where the bodies hang.

Bodies. Jaime.

She’s across the room in a heartbeat hitting every inch of exposed skin she can find. Her fists manage to land a few good blows before she’s roughly pinned on her back again with a confused and angry Robb leaning over her.

“What in gods name is wrong with you woman?”

“Did you HANG HIM? Is that Jaime? Did you kill my brother?”

Robb’s eyes adjust and instead of relaxing his hold on her he only tightens it. “No. It’s the guards who aided in his escape.”

Ella is shocked and horrified all at once. “They only did what she asked them to!” The men who Catelyn convinced to help them had been men who had served her since she was a girl. Men who owed their allegiance not to Robb Stark but Hoster Tully’s daughter. Surely Robb can’t hang men for obeying the daughter of their lord?

“They attacked my guard, then aided in my prisoner’s escape. I don’t care who they serve under, they deserved their fate.”

Tears fill her eyes but she refuses to let him see her cry again. “You didn’t have to hang them!”

Robb finally lets her go. “I can’t have men thinking they can disobey my orders. Had they been my own men I would have taken their heads. Edmure suggested that I string them up from the walls.”

Ella watches as he gets out of bed and dresses to start his day. Cold realization dawns on her that today she’d caused two good men to be hanged and now she will be forced to marry the man who ordered it. “Why hasn’t Willas been invited into the castle?”

Robb stops his movements and turns to her. “You want him here?”

“Of course I don’t! Why haven’t you sent him away? What’s he doing standing around out there like that?”

Robb seems to relax. “He refuses to leave without speaking to me and I’ve been up all night taking care of you and sending men out to look for your child murderer of a brother.”

“Alleged child murderer. Only you and your horrid mother believes he’d do that to Bran.”

Robb shrugs. “The entire Kingdom knows he did it. You’re the only one who seems to think he’s an honorable man. Him leaving you behind should have shown you he’s not.”

“He didn’t want to leave me.” Her heart aches remembering the guilt trip she forced on Jaime to convince him to go. In the end Catelyn’s guard ended up having to haul him to his feet and drag him out into the darkness to the boat. He’d been fed so little these past months that he was too weak to put up much of a fight. He barely resembled the man he was before their capture.

“Well he ended up going all the same. Don’t worry though, I’ll have him back here soon.”

“You don’t have to do that. You could just let him go. Perhaps he can free your sisters like your mother thinks he can. He promised to her that he would try.”

Robb sighs and runs his hand through his tangled auburn curls. “You have no idea how much I wish that could be true, but I can’t trust it. I can’t trust him.”

“I know, but what else would we do? You can’t just leave your sisters to rot in Kingslanding.”

Robb nods. “I know this isn’t what you want, and I’m sorry for that. My men want the North to be free. They want gold and land for losing their sons, brothers and fathers. I don’t have the means to pay them and I’m out of options.”

Ella goes and climbs into his lap, settling against his broad chest. “You want to take gold from my father and use it to pay your men?”

Robb buries his face in her hair, confessing in almost a whisper, “I’m going to have to kill him.” Cersei said husbands always lie to their wives, never tell the truth, yet Robb freely tells her his plans to murder her own father and she can only wish he’d lie to her instead.

“Please don’t.”

“I’m sorry. Unless he agrees to hand Joffrey over and give the North their freedom, and pay my men for the lives they’ve sacrificed, then I see no other way.”

Her father would laugh in his face. He’d probably congratulate him first on the size of his massive balls, then relieve him of them immediately after.

“My father won’t let you dictate those terms to him like that. His pride and honor would forbid him from accepting it, no matter the cost. You’ve heard the tales, I know you have. What he did to House Reyne. He’ll do that to you.”

Robb agrees. “I know. It’s why I’ve got to beat him in battle, then go to Kingslanding and drag Joffrey out myself.”

Her shiver causes him to hold her tighter. “Please don’t kill my family. If I marry you, maybe that will help. Maybe this child can help bring an end to this fighting and my father will see the wrongs that have been done and help right them. If you could let me see him-”

Robb’s arms tighten, “No. You’re to stay here. It’s not safe for you to travel,” his hand covers her belly. “How far do you think you are?”

Ella shrugs, because how could she know? He keeps her so locked up that she has no way to know how many days have passed. He’s had her for so many moons now that she barely knows how long it'b been. “Maybe the Maester could tell us.”

* * *

Catelyn waits until her father finishes the poppy and closes his eyes before speaking. “He was asking after a woman, someone named Tansy.”

"Tansy?" The Maester looks at her blankly.

"You know no one by that name? A serving girl, a woman from some nearby village? Perhaps someone from years past?" Catelyn has been gone from Riverrun for a very long time. If anyone knew this Tansy it would be the Maester.

"No, my lady. I can make inquiries, if you like. Utherydes Wayn would surely know if any such person ever served at Riverrun. Tansy, did you say? The smallfolk often name their daughters after flowers and herbs." The maester looks at her thoughtful. "There was a widow, I recall, she used to come to the castle looking for old shoes in need of new soles. Her name was Tansy, now that I think on it. Or was it Pansy? Some such. But she has not come for many years . . . "

"Her name was Violet," says Catelyn, remembering the old woman very well.

"Was it?" The maester looks apologetic. "My pardons, Lady Catelyn, but I may not stay. The King has decreed that we are to speak to you only so far as our duties require."

That. Little. Shit. "Then you must do as he commands." As we all must... 

After the maester had gone, she dons a woolen cloak and steps out onto the balcony once more. The bodies of her fathers most trusted guards seem to mock her. Damn him. Damn him for being so stubborn and forcing her to go to such lengths.

All that day she watches, and well into the evening, until her legs ached from standing. This would be her punishment. She wouldn’t shrink back from their rotting corpses because she knew she signed their death warrants by asking for their help. She knew Robb would kill them for it. Sometimes being a mother means doing things you normally wouldn’t do, things that no one should have to do. For the chance at saving her daughters she would do this and more.

Maester Vyman returns at evenfall to minister to Lord Tully and bring Catelyn a modest supper of bread, cheese, and boiled beef with horseradish. "I spoke to Utherydes Wayn, my lady. He is quite certain that no woman by the name of Tansy has ever been at Riverrun during his service."

"There was a raven today, I saw. Has Jaime been taken again?" Or slain, gods forbid?

"No, my lady, we've had no word of the Kingslayer."

"Why hasn’t the Tyrell’s been given admittance into the castle? I see they moved and set up camp just off the road.”

“The King will not allow them into the Keep.”

Catelyn nods, she expected as much. “Where is the King now? Can I see him?”

"My lady, I should not . . . " Vyman glances about, as if to make certain no one else was in the room. "The King has wed the girl. They are having a small feast to celebrate.”

A laugh bursts out, then another followed by another. “So he’s married her then? Without even inviting me?” Peals of laughter spill from her dry, cracked lips as she looks up to the sky. “Ned, my love, what a fool we’ve made.”

The Maester stands and watches her until she finally gains control once more.

“Will my lady be needing anything before I go?”

“Is she really carrying his child?”

This clearly wasn’t the question he expected. Face red, he begins to gather up his potions.

“Well?”

"My lady, I am commanded not to speak of that with anyone. I am sorry." Vyman made a hurried exit, and once again Catelyn was left alone with her father. The milk of the poppy had done its work, and Lord Hoster was sunk in heavy sleep. A thin line of spittle ran down from one corner of his open mouth to dampen his pillow. Catelyn took a square of linen and wiped it away gently. When she touched him, Lord Hoster moaned. "Forgive me," he said, so softly she could scarcely hear the words . "Tansy . . . blood . . . the blood . . . gods be kind . . . "

His words disturbed her more than she could say, though she could make no sense of them. Blood, she thought. Must it all come back to blood? Father, who was this woman, and what did you do to her that needs so much forgiveness?

That night Catelyn slept fitfully, haunted by formless dreams of her children and Ned. Well before the break of day, she woke with her father's words echoing in her ears. Sweet babes, and trueborn . . . why would he say that, unless . . . could he have fathered a bastard on this woman Tansy? She could not believe it. Her brother Edmure, yes; it would not have surprised her to learn that Edmure had a dozen natural children. But not her father, not Lord Hoster Tully, never.

Could Tansy be some pet name he called Lysa, the way he called her Cat? Lord Hoster had mistaken her for her sister before. You'll have others, he said. Sweet babes, and trueborn. Lysa had miscarried five times, twice in the Eyrie, thrice at King's Landing . . . but never at Riverrun, where Lord Hoster would have been at hand to comfort her. Never, unless . . . unless she was with child, that first time . . .

She and her sister had been married on the same day, and left in their father's care when their new husbands had ridden off to rejoin Robert's rebellion. Afterward, when their moon blood did not come at the accustomed time, Lysa had gushed happily of the sons she was certain they carried. "Your son will be heir to Winterfell and mine to the Eyrie. Oh, they'll be the best of friends, like your Ned and Lord Robert. They'll be more brothers than cousins, truly, I just know it." She was so happy.

But Lysa's blood had come not long after, and all the joy had gone out of her. Catelyn had always thought that Lysa had simply been a little late, but if she had been with child . . .

She remembered the first time she gave her sister Robb to hold; small, red-faced, and squalling, but strong even then, full of life. No sooner had Catelyn placed the babe in her sister's arms than Lysa's face dissolved into tears. Hurriedly she had thrust the baby back at Catelyn and fled.

If she had lost a child before, that might explain Father's words, and much else besides . . . Lysa's match with Lord Arryn had been hastily arranged, and Jon was an old man even then, older than their father. An old man without an heir. His first two wives had left him childless, his brother's son had been murdered with Brandon Stark in King's Landing, his gallant cousin had died in the Battle of the Bells. He needed a young wife if House Arryn was to continue . . . a young wife known to be fertile.

Catelyn rose, threw on a robe, and descended the steps to the darkened solar to stand over her father. A sense of helpless dread filled her. "Father," she said, "Father, I know what you did." She was no longer an innocent bride with a head full of dreams. She was a widow, a traitor, a grieving mother, and wise, wise in the ways of the world. "You made him take her," she whispered. "Lysa was the price Jon Arryn had to pay for the swords and spears of House Tully."

Small wonder her sister's marriage had been so loveless. The Arryns were proud, and prickly of their honor. Lord Jon might wed Lysa to bind the Tullys to the cause of the rebellion, and in hopes of a son, but it would have been hard for him to love a woman who came to his bed soiled and unwilling. He would have been kind, no doubt; dutiful, yes; but Lysa needed warmth.

The next day, as she broke her fast, Catelyn asked for quill and paper and began a letter to her sister in the Vale of Arryn.

* * *

Two full days pass before Willas is finally granted permission to enter the castle, and when he does finally gain entry he's forced to walk down many long halls and walk ways in what feels like circles until his crippled leg aches and his body is covered in sweat. He has no choice but to continue on if he wishes to see Ella, but the room he's finally led into doesn't have her. 

Instead of the beautiful, golden haired girl he loves he finds a young man with auburn curly hair and a thick beard hunched over a long table covered in maps. There's a clerk standing beside him with a portable writing desk slung around his neck, a quill in one hand, another tucked behind his ear. 

It's then he knows who this man is... his greatest enemy. Robb Stark, the Young Wolf... the King of the North. 

The growl of a giant dire wolf he didn't notice slowly approaching is the only sound that greets him. 

* * *

AN: Yes, Ella may have a good case of Stockholm syndrome... But can you really blame her?


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

_“He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.” ― Philippa Gregory_

Catelyn spends hours on her letter to Lysa. She began with news of Robb’s victories, both on the battlefield and politically. How his men made him their King. How proud she is of all he's accomplished. How proud Ned would be. How she misses her other children. Then she writes of their father and how he needs her forgiveness now that his time grows short. She begs for her sister to come, and if she cannot, could she not at least write to him? A few words of love, so he might die in peace?

Even as she sets the quill aside and asked for sealing wax, Catelyn sensed that the letter was like to be too little and too late. Maester Vyman did not believe Lord Hoster would linger long enough for a raven to reach the Eyrie and return. Though he has said much the same before. Tully men do not surrender easily, no matter the odds. After she entrusted the parchment to the maester's care, Catelyn goes to the sept and lights a candle to the Father Above for her own father's sake, a second to the Crone, who had let the first raven into the world when she peered through the door of death, and a third to the Mother, for Lysa and all the children she had lost. Cat prays that she will never know that type of loss.

Later that day, as she sits at Lord Hoster's bedside with a book, reading the same passage over and over, she hears the sound of loud voices and a trumpet's blare. Ser Robin, she thinks at once, flinching. She goes to the balcony, but there is nothing to be seen out on the rivers, but she can still hear the voices more clearly from outside, the sound of many horses, the clink of armor, and here and there a cheer. Catelyn makes her way up the winding stairs to the roof of the keep. Ser Desmond did not say that Robb had forbidden her from the roof, she tells herself as she climbs.

The sounds are coming from the far side of the castle, by the main gate. A knot of men stand before the portcullis as it rose in jerks and starts, and in the fields beyond, outside the castle, are several riders. When the wind blows, it lifts their banners, and she trembles at the sight of the golden lion on a crimson field. It was Tywin Lannister’s messenger.

Catelyn watched them from her father's balcony. Hours passed without a word from her son, only the Maester had come to check on her father and bring her meals.

Finally after darkness had settled her brother Edmure appears.

"Edmure," Catelyn nearly shouts, worried, "You look unwell. Has something happened? Have the Lannisters crossed the river? I saw the Lannister messenger arrive and leave hours ago."

His mouth tightens in anger. "I wouldn’t know, because I’ve been riding night and day searching for the Kingslayer who you saw fit to set loose. You had no right Cat..."

"I had a mother's right."

"No right," Edmure repeats. "He was Robb's captive, your king's captive, and Robb charged me to keep him safe. He trusted him within these walls, with MY men!”

“He will return to Kingslanding and free my girls," she says simply.

"Cersei will never give them up."

"Not Cersei. Tyrion. He swore it, in open court. And the Kingslayer swore it as well."

"Jaime's word is worthless. As for the Imp, he’s a drunken fool who holds no power or sway in Kingslanding."

“Tywin Lannister sent him there as Hand of the King, so if that man trusts him I think perhaps we can too.” She had made Jaime swear a hundred oaths, but it was his brother's promise she had pinned her hopes on.

“Jaime was my charge, and I mean to have him back. I've sent ravens-"

"Ravens to whom? How many?"

"Three," he says, "So the message will be certain to reach Lord Bolton. By river or road, the way from Riverrun to King's Landing must take them close by Harrenhal."

"Harrenhal." The very word seemed to darken the room. Horror thickened her voice as she seethes, "Edmure, do you know what you have done?"

"Have no fear, I left your part out. I wrote that Jaime had escaped, and offered a thousand dragons for his recapture."

Worse and worse, Catelyn thinks in despair. My brother is a fool. Unbidden, unwanted, tears fill her eyes. "If this was an escape," she says softly, "and not an exchange of hostages, why should the Lannisters free my girls?"

"It will never come to that. The Kingslayer will be returned to us, I have made certain of it."

"All you have made certain is that I shall never see my daughters again. Jaime may have had a chance to make it to King's Landing safely . . . so long as no one was hunting for him. But now . . . " Catelyn could not go on.

“Stop worrying, as I said he will be returned to us. I’ve just heard of the King’s marriage. I’m disappointed he did not wait for my return. What could it mean for him not to think of me during such an important occasion?”

Catelyn wanted to slap him. Gods be good. “If that is what you’re worried about you’re more of a fool than I thought. He married her in secret-”

“Secret? Is that what they told you? Ha! He invited his bannermen, and had a feast afterwards! They even used my own musicians! Can you believe it? In my great hall and they didn’t even wait for me!”

“This does not matter. What matters is that messenger that Tywin Lannister sent. I’m not allowed to roam freely so perhaps you can go and find out what that was all about.”

Edmure shakes his head. “I’m to go and dine with Tyrell boy. Robb wants to know where his head is at before he makes him an offer of Sansa’s hand tomorrow.”

“Sansa? What does she have to do with this?”

“He hasn’t told you? Your son plans to offer Willas Tyrell Sansa’s hand as a consolation prize for stealing away his bride.”

“Robb’s offering marriages for my own daughters and doesn’t not think to ask me first?”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have went behind his back and freed the Kingslayer if you wished to have a say in whom your daughters marriages are arranged to. Don't expect to have the King's trust in any important matter after what you've done.”

"Get out!" She had no right to command him, here in the castle that would soon be his, yet her tone would brook no argument. "Leave me to Father and my grief, I have no more to say to you. Go. Go." All she wanted was to lie down, to close her eyes and sleep, and pray no dreams would come.

* * *

Tyrion stood outside the Queen’s door listening to the soft sound of the high harp, mingled with a trilling of pipes. The singer’s voice was muffled by the thick walls, yet Tyrion knew the verse. I loved a maid as fair as summer, he remembered, with sunlight in her hair . . .

Ser Meryn Trant guarded the queen’s door this night. His muttered “My lord” struck Tyrion as a tad grudging, but he opened the door nonetheless. The song broke off abruptly as he strode into his sister’s bedchamber.

Cersei was reclining on a pile of cushions. Her feet were bare, her golden hair artfully tousled, her robe a green-and-gold samite that caught the light of the candles and shimmered as she looked up. “Sweet sister,” Tyrion said, “how beautiful you look tonight.” He turned to the singer. “And you as well, cousin. I had no notion you had such a lovely voice.”

The compliment made Ser Lancel sulky; perhaps he thought he was being mocked. It seemed to Tyrion that the lad had grown three inches since being knighted. Lancel had thick sandy hair, green Lannister eyes, and a line of soft blond fuzz on his upper lip. At sixteen, he was cursed with all the certainty of youth, unleavened by any trace of humor or self-doubt, and wed to the arrogance that came so naturally to those born blond and strong and handsome.

His recent elevation had only made him worse. “Did Her Grace send for you?” the boy demanded.

“Not that I recall,” Tyrion admitted. “It grieves me to disturb your revels, Lancel, but as it happens, I have matters of import to discuss with my sister.”

Cersei regards him suspiciously. “If you are here about those begging brothers, Tyrion, spare me your reproaches. I won’t have them spreading their filthy treasons in the streets. They can preach to each other in the dungeons.”

“And count themselves lucky that they have such a gentle queen,” adds Lancel. “I would have had their tongues out.”

“One even dared to say that the gods were punishing us because Jaime murdered the rightful king,” Cersei declares stupidly. “It will not be borne, Tyrion. I gave you ample opportunity to deal with these lice, but you and your Ser Jacelyn did nothing, so I commanded Vylarr to attend to the matter.”

“And so he did.” Tyrion had been annoyed when the red cloaks had dragged a half dozen of the scabrous prophets down to the dungeons without consulting him, but they were not important enough to battle over. “No doubt we will all be better off for a little quiet in the streets. That is not why I came. I have tidings I know you will be anxious to hear, sweet sister, but they are best spoken of privily.”

“Very well.” The harpist and the piper bowed and hurried out, while Cersei kissed her cousin chastely on the cheek. Gross. “Leave us, Lancel. My brother’s harmless when he’s alone. If he’d brought his pets, we’d smell them.”

The young knight gave his cousin a baleful glance and pulled the door shut forcefully behind him. “I’ll have you know I make Shagga bathe once a fortnight,” Tyrion said with a smirk.

“You’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you? Why?”

“Why not?” Tyrion spits back. Every day, every night, it's the same bullshit. He hopped up onto the great canopied bed. “Is this the bed where Robert died? I’m surprised you kept it.”

“It gives me sweet dreams,” she grins. “Now spit out your business and waddle away, Imp.”

Tyrion grimaced. “Father sent a raven. It appears much has happened in the last few days.”

“Well? I don’t particularly enjoy you wasting my time so say it and get out.”

“Well first, he says his spies have informed him that the fool Edmure Tully is offering a small fortune for the return of our dear brother the Kingslayer. Robb Stark won’t admit it, but it seems Jaime has escaped.”

Cersei’s smile was absolutely lovely, but what he said next would ruin it. “And, it seems our dear sweet sister Ella has found herself a husband.”

As expected Cersei’s smile was gone, replaced with a look full of revulsion. “He didn’t?”

“It appears the Young Wolf did. I don’t have all the details, but I can’t imagine she married him willingly.”

Cersei bolts to her feet. “And yet you sit there grinning like a harvest-day pumpkin? Go get Sansa! I want her to hear this news! And Joff too!”

“Not that I don’t appreciate your sisterly devotion to Ella, but I don’t think making poor Sansa pay for her brother’s foolish decisions is going to help matters.”

“Oh it will help matters all right. It will make me feel better to see the look on her face when she realizes her perfect, honorable brother has chosen to get his cock wet over any chances he had at seeing her released!”

Tyrion couldn’t help but laugh. “I honestly don’t think that boy has any honor at all. I’ve been saying it for a long time now, every since he treated me like shit under his boots when I brought the plans for the horse saddle for his younger brother Bran."

“All of the Starks treated us that way from the moment we stepped into their winter wasteland. Looking down their long noses at us like their noble blood made them above us when everyone knows they have little gold to speak of and even less education. Sansa will pay for what’s been done to our sister who deserved far better than marriage to a Stark.”

Tyrion sighed and realized he’d have to make sure none of her plans came to fruition. His back was to her as he filled two cups with sweet Arbor red. It was the easiest thing in the world to sprinkle a pinch of fine powder into hers.

“How about a drink first?” he asked as he handed her the wine.

It was the next morning as he broke his fast that her messenger arrived. The queen was indisposed and would not be able to leave her chambers. Not able to leave her privy, more like. Tyrion made the proper sympathetic noises and sent word to Cersei to rest easy, he  
would treat with Ser Cleos as they’d planned.

The Iron Throne of Aegon the Conqueror was a tangle of nasty barbs and jagged metal teeth waiting for any fool who tried to sit too comfortably, and the steps made his stunted legs cramp as he climbed up to it, all too aware of what an absurd spectacle he must be. Yet there was one thing to be said for it. It was high.

Lannister guardsmen stood silent in their crimson cloaks and lion-crested half-helms. Sansa Stark looked especially lovely this morning, though her face was as pale as milk.

“Call forth Ser Cleos Frey.” His voice rang off the stone walls and down the length of the hall. He liked that too. A pity Shae could not be here to see this, he reflected. She’d asked to come, but it was impossible. Ser Cleos made the long walk between the gold cloaks and the crimson, looking neither right nor left.

“Ser Cleos,” Littlefinger said from the council table, “you have our thanks for bringing us this peace offer from Lord Stark.”

Grand Maester Pycelle cleared his throat. “The Queen Regent, the King’s Hand, and the small council have considered the terms offered by this self-styled King in the North. Sad to say, they will not do, and you must tell these northmen so, ser.”

“Here are our terms,” said Tyrion. “Robb Stark must lay down his sword, swear fealty, and return to Winterfell. He must free my lovely sister Ella unharmed, and place his host under my father's command, to march against the rebels Renly and Stannis Baratheon. Each of Stark’s bannermen must send us a son as hostage. A daughter will suffice where there is no son. They shall be treated gently and given high places here at court, so long as their fathers commit no new treasons.”

Cleos Frey looked ill. “My lord Hand,” he said, “Lord Stark will never consent to these Terms.”

We never expected he would, Cleos. “Tell him that we have raised another great host at Casterly Rock, that soon it will march on him from the west while my lord father advances from the east. Tell him that he stands alone, without hope of allies. Stannis and Renly Baratheon war against each other, and the Prince of Dorne has consented to wed his son Trystane to the Princess Myrcella.” Murmurs of delight and consternation alike arose from the gallery and the back of the hall.

“As to this of my cousins,” Tyrion went on, “we offer Harrion Karstark and Ser Wylis Manderly for Willem Lannister, and Lord Cerwyn and Ser Donnel Locke for your brother Tion. Tell Stark that two Lannisters are worth four northmen in any season.” He waited for the laughter to die. “His father’s bones he shall have, as a gesture of Joffrey’s good faith.”

“Lord Stark asked for his sisters and his father’s sword as well,” Ser Cleos reminded him.

Ser Ilyn Payne stood mute, the hilt of Eddard Stark’s greatsword rising over one shoulder. “Ice,” said Tyrion. “He’ll have that when he makes his peace with us, not before.”

“As you say. And his sisters?”

Tyrion glances toward Sansa, and felt a stab of pity as he says, “Until such time as he frees my sister the Lady Ella, unharmed, they shall remain here as hostages. How well they are treated depends on him.” And if the gods are good, Bywater will find Arya alive, before Robb learns she’s gone missing.

“I shall bring him your message, my lord. But, I received word earlier this day that Lord Stark has married your sister Ella, and that there will be no terms that include her returning.”

Tyrion’s eyes shot to Sansa, morbidly eager to see her response. As expected tears filled her pretty eyes but she fought them down quickly. Yes sweet girl, this is the real world where men choose beautiful blondes over saving their sisters.

“Well that is too bad for I hear Jaime is already free and he has little else to give us.”

Tyrion plucked at one of the twisted blades that sprang from the arm of the throne. And now the thrust. “Vylarr,” he called.

“My lord.”

“The men Stark sent are sufficient to protect Lord Eddard’s bones, but a Lannister should have a Lannister escort,” Tyrion declares proudly. “Ser Cleos is the queen’s cousin, and mine. We shall sleep more easily if you would see him safely back to Riverrun.”

“As you command. How many men should I take?”

“Why, all of them.”

Vylarr stood like a man made of stone. It was Grand Maester Pycelle who rose, gasping,

“My lord Hand, that cannot . . . your father, Lord Tywin himself, he sent these good men to our city to protect Queen Cersei and her children . . .”

“The Kingsguard and the City Watch protect them well enough. The gods speed you on your way, Vylarr.”

“Now, before I go does anyone else have anything?”

A man in black stepped forward. “The Lord Commander sent me to His Grace the king,” Thorne answered. “The matter is too grave to be left to servants.”

“The king is playing with his new crossbow,” Tyrion raises an eyebrow. “You can speak to servants or hold your silence.”

“As you will,” Ser Alliser says, displeasure in every word. “I am sent to tell you that we found two rangers, long missing. They were dead, yet when we brought the corpses back to the Wall they rose again in the night. One slew Ser Jaremy Rykker, while the second tried to murder the Lord Commander.”

Distantly, Tyrion heard someone snigger. Does he mean to mock him with this folly? He shifts uneasily and glances down at Varys, Littlefinger, and Pycelle, wondering if one of them had a role in this. A dwarf enjoyed at best a tenuous hold on dignity. Once the court and kingdom started to laugh at him, he was doomed. And yet . . . and yet . . .

Tyrion remembered a cold night under the stars when he’d stood beside the boy Jon Snow and a great white wolf atop the Wall at the end of the world, gazing out at the trackless dark beyond. He had felt—what?—something, to be sure, a dread that had cut like that frigid northern wind. A wolf had howled off in the night, and the sound had sent a shiver through him.

Don’t be a fool, he told himself. A wolf, a wind, a dark forest, it meant nothing. And yet . . . He had come to have a liking for old Jeor Mormont during his time at Castle Black. “I trust that the Old Bear survived this attack?”

“He did.”

“And that your brothers killed these, ah, dead men?”

“We did.”

“You’re certain that they are dead this time?” Tyrion asked mildly. When Bronn choked on a snort of laughter, he knew how he must proceed. “Truly truly dead?”

“They were dead the first time,” Ser Alliser snaps back. “Pale and cold, with black hands and feet. I brought Jared’s hand, torn from his corpse by the bastard’s wolf.”

Littlefinger stirred. “And where is this charming token?”

Ser Alliser frowns uncomfortably. “It . . . rotted to pieces while I waited, unheard. There’s naught left to show but bones.”

Titters echoes through the hall. “Lord Baelish,” Tyrion called down to Littlefinger, “buy our brave Ser Alliser a hundred spades to take back to the Wall with him.”

“Spades?” Ser Alliser narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“If you bury your dead, they won’t come walking,” Tyrion told him, and the court laughed openly. “Spades will end your troubles, with some strong backs to wield them. Ser Jacelyn, see that the good brother has his pick of the city dungeons for I hear the cold winds are rising. The Wall must be held.”

* * *

Robb watched stiffly as Willas lingered in the open doorway and took great joy in seeing how uncomfortable and tired he appeared. He may have had the guard lead him the long way around but could see no harm in it. After all the man was there to try and steal away the woman carrying his child.

“Lord Willas, I’m glad you could make it.”

Willas eyed him coldly, “Where is Ella? I demand that you release her at once!”

Robb stood to his full height, not liking the tone. “I know what you came here for and I’m sorry that you came all this way to be disappointed. I had hoped that we could do this civilly for I have no hopes of finding another enemy. I have my plate full of those at the moment.”

Willas prickled. “Well you should have thought of that before you kidnapped my bride.”

“My bride.”

“Excuse me?”

“My bride. I’ve married her. So you see, what you’ve come for just isn’t possible, but that does not mean we can’t find som-”

Willas made it three feet into the room fist raised before Greywind stopped him short. The older boy struggled with his urge for a fight verses the urge not to have his throat ripped out by the giant direwolf growling in front of him.

Robb watched with no small amount of satisfaction before remembering he needed to convince this boy to marry Sansa. They needed Tyrell gold and this was going to get them none of it.

“Greywind to me!”

Willas watched as the wolf retreated to sit at his master's feet. “As I was saying, I was hoping we could come to an agreement. You’re in need of a wife, and I have a beautiful sister who is in need of a husband.”

Willas threw up his arms, “What kind of fool do you take me for? I demand to see Ella and I’ll hear no more of this nonsense from you!”

* * *

Ella wakes that morning to frost on the windows and an ache between her legs from Robb’s lovemaking the night before. A new maid waits until she heard her stir before entering the chambers with water for a warm bath.

After washing she’s helped into a dress that’s noticeably tighter than when it was fitted on her the week prior. Her breasts seem much larger and belly a tad thicker. She takes a moment to mourn her once girlish figure before she’s helped to sit in the chair before the looking glass. The dark gown makes her hair shine golden and skin look coldly white against the rich deep fabric.

She can’t help but think about her quick wedding and how she nearly choked on her words. Robb, prosaic and real, understood exactly what was happening, and unwilling to be humiliated in front of his men gave her a good sharp pinch in the palm of her hand. He used his nails, digging into her skin until her eyes met his hard blue ones and she emerged from the mist with a gasp of air and said her words.

Not the wedding every girl dreams of, but one fitting for their relationship.

She paid him back fully later in bed, digging her nails into his back until his blood ran down onto the sheets. They spent the rest of the night in bed whispering of their child and what they would do once the war was over. He told her of his plans for Winterfell and of the glass gardens and how he would bring back all of the flowers in the South if it made her happy. 

Her day dreams of winter roses are interrupted when Robb enters. He waits patiently for the maid to finish brushing her hair and once the door is closed he turns with a scowl. “Willas is insisting on seeing you.”

Ella cares absolutely nothing for his ill temper. “So?” She feels no guilt. Refuses to. Nope. None. Well... Maybe a little. 

Sighing Robb sits on the bed. “I need you to convince him to join our side and marry Sansa.”

Flabbergasted Ella gapes at him. “You can’t be serious?”

“Of course I’m serious! He came all this way for you and now you’re married to me. He may not have the full support of his family since they are joined with Renly, but gods Ella we need his gold and men. Can’t you get him to side with us? We need the support!”

The gall of this man. He kidnaps her, torments her, gets her pregnant and steals her future and now she has to sweet talk the wonderful, sweet man she thought she’d spend her life with into marrying her good sister who already promised to marry her nephew Joffrey.

Instead of saying any of this like she wants to, she remembers the babe in her belly and thinks now that she’s got a child to consider that she will need to do a lot of things she never thought she’d have to.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

**“Being enemies doesn’t change the fact that you’re fucking mine.” ** _― Rina Kent, Steel Princess_

The shortest way to the central keep where Robb was meeting with Willas was through the godswood, with its grass and wildflowers and thick stands of elm and redwood. Not a short walk on a good day, and even longer when trying to balance a newly forged crown on her head. 

To just call it heavy would be an understatement. The thing was downright ugly as well. An open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords. It was nearly identical to Robb’s but thankfully much smaller. 

Robb had told her the ancient crown of the Kings of Winter had been lost three centuries ago, yielded up to Aegon the Conqueror when Torrhen Stark knelt in submission. What Aegon had done with it no man could say. Lord Hoster’s smith had completed hers only that morning. She’d been expecting perhaps gold, or silver with gemstones, but it had none; Robb said bronze and iron were the metals of winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold. The cold she’d soon be living in, the thought made her shiver.

When she finally made it through the main doors she saw Robb waiting for her, wearing his own crown on his thick auburn hair. She fought down a grin as he adjusted it, first forward and then giving it a quarter turn. He stopped when he saw her, moving forward to take her arm. 

“He’s insisting on speaking to you alone.” 

Ella rolled her eyes. Of course he was. He came all this way to free her from the savages holding her prisoner. Sadly he wasn’t too far off the mark on that. “What do you want me to say to him?” 

Robb grimaced. “That you want him to accept the betrothal to Sansa and that you’re happy with your lot.” 

“Am I?” 

“Are you not?” 

_ As if that matters now. _ “I’ll do my best.” 

“This is important. Please go in there with a smile and look like the joyful bride you are.” 

Joyful bride? She’s anything but joyful. She’s been kidnapped and tortured, and now she’s carrying a child she doesn’t want with a man she didn’t want to marry. She’s surviving is what she is, no more no less. 

“I’ll do my best.” She repeats. 

Robb seems to accept that because he nods and leads them into the room where Willas is painfully pacing. 

“The King and Queen of the North!” Edmure announces as if it’s a feast and not a library with one man. 

Willas nearly trips over his own feet as he rushes them, stopping in front of her with wide, sultry eyes.

“Ella! My love, are you okay? I came as quickly as I could!” He attempts to reach out for her until a snarling Greywind moves forward between them.

Ella sighs. “Could we sit?” She’s much too exhausted for this. 

* * *

Half an hour later they are both drinking tea sitting alone in the library. Well, not alone completely. Greywind sits at her feet, ready to rip out the throat of anyone who looks like they may try and sneak her away. 

Robb would never leave her completely alone of course. Not with Willas who looks like she just ripped out his heart and stomped all over it. 

“I don’t understand Ella. How can you be okay remaining with the man who took you against your will?” His question is valid.

"Please, be honest with me." She flinches at the look of earnestness in his brown eyes. She knows she won’t be able to get him to understand by lying to him.

Screw what Robb says. “Of course I’m not okay. But it doesn’t change anything. I’m carrying his child. I’ve married him. My future is only with him now. You must see that.” 

Willas looks like he may get sick. She can sympathize, she's feeling quite sick as well.

“Ella, you have other options, and you will ALWAYS have me. If you let me I’ll find a way to get you free from all of this. We can still marry like we always planned to.”

She chokes down sob, “You’ll still marry me even if I’m carrying another man's child?” How is that even possible?

Willas watches her intensely then nods, “I’ve always loved you and I love you still. I’ll raise the child as my own, even make it my heir if it’s a boy. I'll love your child like I love you.” 

Now she does sob, relief and pain all mixed in one. “You have no idea how much I wish I could say yes. I hate being a prisoner, and I loathe the idea of living in the North surrounded by people who despise me for my name. But what you’re offering just isn’t possible. Robb’s army is winning, and you have none. You have no hope of helping me. The only two options you have are either agreeing to marry Sansa and join us, or leave today empty handed.” 

He reaches for her hand but looks toward Greywind and hesitates. “I have men with me, and I know your brother Jaime was able to escap-”

“He didn’t escape. Catelyn Stark and I freed him with men loyal to her father. She’s now locked up, a prisoner in her own home. She won’t be able to help anyone, not even herself now. I have no one here loyal to me, and your men are being watched. Robb won’t ever let me go." She sits up straighter and wipes her eyes. "We both need to accept this and find a way to move on.” 

Willas frowns. “Do you love him?” 

"W_hat? _” 

“Do you love him. Your husband, the egotistical tyrant who calls himself King of the North. Do you love him?” 

Ella fidgets with her dress. “I don’t know. I mean, sometimes it feels like I do. But, how could I ever really know? It’s not like I have a choice in this. My mind may just be creating those feelings so that I don’t fall into complete despair. I can't know that.” 

Willas rubs his face and she can see the wetness there. He leans forward and lowers his voice so that anyone standing outside the door won’t be able to hear. “I swear to you now, I’ll make this right. I’ll find a way to give you a choice.” 

She leans forward and whispers back, “What are you going to do?” Her heart is pounding with excitement… with dare she name it.. _ Hope _. 

“I’ll agree to marry the sister, I’ll even bring him more men so I can stay close. We’re in the middle of a war…” his determined eyes pin her to her seat.. “There will be a moment when he’s not looking, when he’s distracted, perhaps by a battle, or gods if we’re lucky, a moment where he’s fighting for his own life… and when that moment comes I’ll be here and I’ll take you away from this. We’ll go across the sea if we have to. But I swear to you Ella, I’ll save you.”

* * *

That night Ella barely listens as Robb tells her about the upcoming wedding. At first she assumes he’s discussing Sansa and Willas, but it’s not until she hears the Twins that she finally pays attention. “Why would their wedding be there?”

Robb sits down on the bed beside her, nodding towards his boots. “A little help?” He’s been working on that boot for nearly ten minutes and she's found it mildly entertaining up until now. With a great groan she gets out of the bed and bends to look at the dirty boots. 

“These laces need to be replaced.” Her fingers work as he groans and flops onto his back. 

“Old man Frey is insisting on hosting the wedding.”

Her fingers stop tugging. “Why would he want to host a wedding for Willas and Sansa?” 

Robb chuckles. “Wife, you really need to pay better attention. You’re Queen now, you should know this stuff already. It’s my uncle’s wedding, I’ve agreed to giving Edmure over to one of the Frey daughters.” 

Ella grimaces and yanks on the stubborn lace. “Edmure can’t be happy about that.” 

“No, but I’m his King and he’s already caused enough problems. Now he can finally be useful.” 

“How romantic.” With a hard yank the boot finally comes off. The next one is a bit easier and by the time she stands Robb’s already softly snoring. She takes the opportunity to study his face, which even in sleep looks tense. This is a man who can find no rest, not even in his dreams. 

An unpleasant feeling takes over, one very close to guilt. She’d betrayed him that afternoon in the library with Willas, and then lied about when her husband asked her what they discussed. 

At the time she felt justified in speaking so truthfully with her childhood love, but now she wonders if she wasn’t just doing it to be spiteful. She doesn’t think that Willas can actually follow through with his promise, he holds so little power compared to her husband that it’s not even fathomable. She also doesn’t want Willas to marry Sansa, the poor girl doesn't deserve going from a betrothal to Joffrey to having to marry a man already in love with her good sister. 

And a dark, bitter part of her doesn’t want to see Willas with anyone else. He was still just as handsome and sweet as she remembered and the thought of him happy with someone else hurts more than she'd like to admit. 

Studying Robb she wonders which is more handsome. Willas with his large brown, puppy dog eyes and mischievous smile, or her husband with his blue eyes and chiseled features. Her eyes follow the trail of dark auburn hair on his stomach that leads all the way down under his trousers. 

Her traitor hands reach out to touch that trail of dark hair, causing her husband to stir. 

“Ella?” 

“Yes?” Robb’s eyes crack open as he reaches out to pull her on top of him. His hands automatically go under her nightdress, squeezing her bare bottom. 

Robb licks his lips and groans, “I want you on my cock,” he lifts his hips and rubs his hard bulge against her. Ella can’t hold back the moan at feeling him, and together they work swiftly at removing their clothes. 

She’s not on top very often so it’s a bit painful when he first enters her. His wet thumb working her clit helps, and soon she’s riding him hard enough to cause the bed to shake. He groans and reaches up to suck on her nipple, making her cry out ‘Robb’! 

He smiles and releases one nipple to attack the other. His shit eating grin pisses her off and she reaches down and pinches a good amount of his leg hair and yanks it right out. 

His snarl sounds like Greywind and she laughs until he retaliates by biting down on her breast using his teeth. That hurt!

Her responding scream is swiftly followed by a slap across his handsome face which makes him even more feral. She ends up on her back with him thrusting into her like a madman, her wrists being pinned beneath his own. 

She tries to use her hips to throw him off but he’s much too heavy for her, “You bit me!” Angry tears fill her vision as he thrusts even deeper, making her cry out in pain.

“You started it!” He growls back, bending down to taste her lips. 

Big mistake. 

Using her teeth she catches his lip and bites down until her mouth fills with his blood. 

Another snarl and she’s tossed up on top again, riding him until her legs burn and sweat drips down her back. Robb’s lips are parted and his breathing is labored, on the cusp of hyperventilation and he's never been so beautiful. Her back arches as his hands grab on to her hips, pulling her even harder against his cock. 

When one of his fingers touches her clit she loses it, clenching around him until she nearly blacks out. When she comes to he’s panting with his eyes closed, his cum already leaking out of her. 

The red smeared across his face looks gruesome and she remembers she bit him. The pain on her own breast makes her look down to where he bit her first. 

Gods, they were savages. 

* * *

That same night Tyrion sits alone in the Tower of the Hand, sipping at what remained of the fine sweet Dornish wine. Servants came and went, clearing the dishes from the table. He told them to leave the wine. When they were done, Varys came gliding into the hall, wearing flowing lavender robes that matched his smell. 

“We have a problem.”

Tyrion frowned, unhappy to be disturbed so late. “What kind of problem?”

Varys nods towards his cup. “Might I trouble you for a taste of the wine before I ruin your evening?” 

Tyrion waves at the flagon, frowning. Varys fills a cup. “Ah. Sweet as summer.” He takes another long sip. “I hear the grapes singing on my tongue.” 

“I wondered what that noise was. Tell the grapes to keep still, my head is about to split. What news have you brought?” 

“The King, your nephew has been sending ravens to Lord Walder Frey. I haven’t been able to read one, but my spies tell me that Robb Stark is readying to travel to the Twins for the wedding of Edmure Tully and Rosalin Frey.” 

“No,” Tyrion snaps. “Damn you. Damn him.” He could not touch Joffrey, he knew. Not yet, not even if he’d wanted to, and even if he was certain that he did. Yet it rankled, to sit here and know that he could do nothing against the idiotic boy while he ruined everything he worked so hard to fix. 

“Robb Stark will likely take Ella to the Twins to present a united front, this means she will be in danger if the King is making plans against the Starks.” Varys looked ill just saying it. 

Tyrion narrows his eyes, something not feeling right. “How long have you known about these ravens?” 

“For a few days. I didn’t worry until I heard about Edmure’s wedding.” 

Tyrion silently seethes. “In the future, you will tell me what you know, Lord Varys. All of what you know as soon as you know it.” 

The eunuch’s smile is sly. “That might take rather a long time, my good lord. I know quite a lot.” Varys takes another drink of his wine. “With the City Watch in hand, my lord, you are well placed to see to it that His Grace commits no further . . . follies? To be sure, there is still the queen’s household guard to consider . . .” 

“The red cloaks?” Tyrion shrugs. “Vylarr’s loyalty is to Casterly Rock. He knows I am here with my father’s authority. Cersei would find it hard to use his men against me . . . besides, they are only a hundred. I have twice that with men I’ve secured on my own. We need to send a raven to my father in Harrenhal, he needs to know what Joffrey has done.” 

“Yes Milord, that would be wise.”

Tyrion studies the man’s soft hands, the bald powdered face, the slimy little smile, not trusting him, though there was no denying his value. He knew things, beyond a doubt. “Why are you so helpful, Varys?” 

“You are the Hand. I serve the realm, the king, and you.” 

“As you served Jon Arryn and Eddard Stark?” 

“I served Lord Arryn and Lord Stark as best I could. I was saddened and horrified by their most untimely deaths.” 

“Think how I feel. I’m like to be next.” 

“Oh, I think not,” Varys says, swirling the wine in his cup. “Power is a curious thing, my lord. Perchance you have considered the riddle I posed you that day in the inn?” 

“It has crossed my mind a time or two,” Tyrion admitted. 

“The king, the priest, the rich man—who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It’s a riddle without an answer, or rather, too many answers. All depends on the man with the sword.” 

“And yet he is no one,” Varys says. “He has neither crown nor gold nor favor of the gods, only a piece of pointed steel.” 

“That piece of steel is the power of life and death.” 

“Just so . . . yet if it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, why do we pretend our kings hold the power? Why should a strong man with a sword ever obey a child king like Joffrey, or a wine-sodden oaf like his father?” 

“Because these child kings and drunken oafs can call other strong men, with other swords.” 

“Then these other swordsmen have the true power. Or do they? Whence came their swords? Why do they obey?” 

Varys smiles. “Some say knowledge is power. Some tell us that all power comes from the gods. Others say it derives from law. Yet that day on the steps of Baelor’s Sept, our godly High Septon and the lawful Queen Regent and your ever-soknowledgeable servant were as powerless as any cobbler or cooper in the crowd. Who truly killed Eddard Stark do you think? Joffrey, who gave the command? Ser Ilyn Payne, who swung the sword? Or . . . another?” 

Tyrion cocks his head sideways. “Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my head ache worse?” 

Varys grinned. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.” 

“So power is a mummer’s trick?” 

“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmurs, “yet shadows can kill. And oft-times a very small man can cast a very large shadow.” 

“Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I’d feel sad about it.” 

“I will take that as high praise.”

* * *

The next day finds Willas Tyrell standing in his tent, reading through a letter from Walder Frey that would change everything. Robb's Stark time had come to an end and he would be there to see him destroyed. 

* * *


End file.
